Books for less and wrapping for nought!

By Sharon Fussell, October 5, 2012

I came across an old ezine this week – the information is still very fresh and relevant and I thought, as it was written several years ago now, I’d give you another chance to benefit from the tips it contains (or read it for the first time if you are a new subscriber).

Between then and now there has been one thing that has remained the same – the two most popular questions I am asked regarding selling on Amazon:

1) “Where can I get hold of cheap books?”
2) “Where can I get hold of cheap packaging?”

I received some tips from my readers regarding both of these requests and had to share them with you…

How to get hold of more books for less £s

As you know I do most of my book buying from charity shops (I’m always on the look out!) But I thought you may be interested to know there’s a way of getting seriously cut price books and getting into the manager’s ‘good books’ (excuse the pun) to boot…

Sometimes you need to think ‘outside the box’ and a good example of this principle in action has been sent in by Steve who is happy for me to share it with you:

“Dear Sharon,

Thanks for all your informative newsy letters. Regarding buying books from charity shops, I noticed that my local charity shop had started to put dates on their books. I had kind of guessed why but asked a member of staff anyway.

Their answer: as they are donated so many books, to keep the shelves fresh they change them out every two weeks. The unsold books are put into sacks and collected weekly for recycling.

So, armed with a big smile and some charm I asked the manager if I could go through the sacks and pick out the books I thought would be worth listing.

On average they recycle two hundred+ books a week – I pick out about half of them and pay about £10. Of those books, around 80% are usually worth listing so no more trawling around charity shops and cold wet boot sales. One weekly visit, an hour or so sorting out and back home to list them. It’s just a matter of asking, most charity shops are more than happy to get shot of unwanted books taking up storage space.

Regards,

Steve”

A great tip I think you’ll agree! Thanks Steve.

And now…

How to get FREE packaging

As you know, I always advocate using mail bags as they are good for almost any purpose and customers are happy when they receive an item nicely packed.

But, as you can imagine, our books get thrown about, dropped and handled by several people before they get delivered (hopefully) safely to our customers, and protective bubble envelopes are really quite expensive.

So, is there a way of getting around this?

Well, you could reuse mailbags, or you could do what Bob does – saving yourself money and reusing precious packaging material too. Over to Bob:

“Hello Sharon,

This is one of the most useful tips from a financial and environmental point of view.

When shopping in supermarkets, or local stores, go to the fresh produce department and you can pick up, for free, the bubble wrap used to line the fruit boxes, this is ideal for wrapping books.

It is also cheaper to buy a roll of brown paper to wrap over the bubble wrap. This combination is not only cheaper than jiffy bags but you can create a nice tight packet for most books to fit through the Large Letter size requirements at the Post Office and save yourself even more money!

Bob”