On Saturday, I finally got around to selling books down at Powell’s City of Books downtown. I had a couple boxes full of books that I’d been waiting to sell, and several around the house besides. So I gathered them all into a corner of the living room, hunkered down over my laptop and used Powell’s Online Bookbuyer to get a feel for what they might accept.
The online tool took about half of my books and offered me around fifty dollars for the lot. Of course, selling online takes a few weeks to process – I’d much rather get it over with. So I grabbed all the books that the website said it would take, and all the books that were pretty similar to those, and headed downtown.
The line wasn’t bad for a Saturday, and I wasn’t the only person carrying two boxes of books, so that was good. I was amazed at how much they took – I made eighty dollars selling books! ($75 after paying $5 for parking.) They took my complete New Jedi Order series, which is unusual – you’d think they’d have enough Star Wars books. They turned down a few paperbacks due to damage – creased covers and such (My copy of Shadows of the Empire is pretty well-loved). All in all, I did much better than I expected.
We’ll see how I fare selling textbooks on Thursday.