A couple months ago, I decided that I should sell some of the books that
I had for my Masters program. Many of the books are really quite good,
but I doubt that I will read many of them again. Ironically, it seemed
that the best books were the ones I happened to find in a library, and
they are the books I felt I should actually buy, but never did. I have
always hated buying textbooks. I actually don’t really like buying any
books. I feel like it is mostly a waste of money, when I can just get
them at a library for free. I am an English teacher and I do love
reading, but there aren’t many books that I buy that I read more than
once (and sometimes I don’t even read them).
1. Barcode Scanning
2. One-click listing on Amazon.com
When you put a barcode up to your iSight (or any other webcam) Delicious
Library searches Amazon.com for the item. If it finds it, then it
downloads all the information for it from Amazon, without any input from
you. It includes recommendations, retail price, current price (the
lowest used price on Amazon) and other information. If Library cannot
find your item on Amazon.com, it searches other amazon sites until it
finds it. There have been a couple times that it has not been able to
find my item, but it is pretty rare. In the event that it doesn't find
it, I can go find it myself, and drag the address into Delicious
Library, and it will create an item based on that web site. Very slick.
Once I have all the information about my item, I can see if it is
worthwhile for me to try and sell it. For example, the book "Getting to
Yes" has a new price of about \$10, but the lowest used price is just
under \$6. A book by one of my professors has a list price of about
\$20, but is currently selling on Amazon for \$27. That is one that I
certainly want to list. To list an item, all I do is right-click it or
hit Shift+\$ and it lists the item on Amazon. I still have to go
through all the condition and setting-the-price stuff on Amazon, but it
is very easy. Way easier than listing on Half.com, which is what I used
to use.
There are a lot of other neat things about this program, but I these two
features have made it very easy for me to sell 7 of my college textbooks
that I probably won't ever read.
Have a Good Life.