CKY Books – Sell Used Books – Turn your used books into cash

BUY Books – Sell Used Books – Make Money

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

I correspond with quite a few of you, not only here but also on Twitter and Facebook.  Many of you are avid readers and have to purge your home every now & then before you lose a small child among the books you’ve acquired. However, I ALSO know that there are many of you out there visit us because you want to make some extra dough.  Todd has compiled a list of suggestions for where to find used books that could turn you a pretty profit. You avid readers – feel free to read on. You might find it’s not so hard to fund your Amazon habit after all!

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1) FRIENDS OF LIBRARY SALES
Go to the Friends of Library sales in your area. Contact the main library in your town and ask them if they have a book sale periodically. If it’s a decent size library, it may have 2 or 3 sales per year. Normally you pay $15 or so a year to join the FOL. That enables you to get into the sale ahead of the public. And no, ‘The Friends of the Library’ is not a group of Quakers.

2) ESTATE SALES
Watch the newspaper for estate sales. Though some people try to disguise garage sales by calling them estate sales, an estate sale is one in which there is an ‘estate’ left by someone who has died and the people conducting the estate sale are trying to sell ALL the belongings of the recently deceased person in order to ‘settle’ the estate (divide up the money from the proceeds of the sale to the different family members that remain and have a legal right to the estate). I recently bought 29 books for $23 on the last day of a 3-day estate ‘sale’. I’ve already sold 9 of those books for over $150. But perhaps more importantly, through this sale, I made contact with someone that does estate sales on a regular basis and they said they would let me have an early look at the used books of an upcoming sale they are going to have.

3) AUCTIONS
Auctions are different than Estate sales but sometimes estates are settled by having an ‘Estate Auction’ rather than an ‘Estate Sale’. At Estate Sales, items are normally priced and you either pay the price that is marked or you don’t buy it. At an Estate Auction, or any auction, items are not pre-priced but they are sold to the highest bidder. There are other kinds of auctions as well. Sometimes a business goes out of business and a bank or a court of law that now owns the property of the business or is acting on behalf of unpaid creditors has an auction to try to recoup some of the money the business owed. Sometimes a business owner retires or just had excess ‘stuff’ they want to sell. I attended an estate ‘Auction’ about 6 weeks ago and would up buying 200-300 books for $200. A higher price than I wanted to pay, especially since around 75% of the books were worthless (I don’t sell penny books). That’s the way it goes sometimes at an auction. But of the remaining 25% I got my money’s worth and then some.

4) THRIFT STORES
Some, if not many, booksellers utilize this source but I haven’t had much success with it. Thrift stores are stores that typically resell donated items. It may be a small locally owned or operated thrift store or it could be a larger chain like Goodwill. Look in the yellow pages under ‘Thrift Stores’. There is one store in my vicinity that sells things at 25% off one day a week. And my local Goodwill headquarters has an auction every week. I have bought only a handful of books from thrift stores. I’m beginning to think my time is better spent with other sources I have developed.

5) YARD SALES
I haven’t had much success with finding books at yard sales – it’s a lot of leg work (and gas money). Now if you happen to be out anyway on the weekend and see one and have the time, go ahead and stop. In my town, the newspaper has free ads you can use and there are many yard sales announced there each week. Sometimes people will include ‘books’ in the description of what they are selling, but beware, it could be a load of firewood (Nora Roberts novels, Readers Digest books, Time Life, National Geographic, old textbooks or encyclopedia sets). However, I was out one Saturday and picked up 5 books at a sale for $1 each that I would up selling for $15 – $20 each. Another time I was driving around looking for yard sales when I came across a bunch of boxes someone had thrown out – it looked like someone had moved. In the boxes were quite a few books, one that’s on the river for $75. I haven’t sold it yet but I have sold some of the other ones.

6) PUT AN AD IN THE PAPER
As mentioned earlier, our town newspaper allows you to place free ads. So I tried putting an ad in the paper that said I wanted non-fiction books, small or large lots. I didn’t say I wanted to ‘buy’ books; I just said I ‘wanted’ books. I made that distinction in hopes someone would just want to get rid of some books at no cost. But I knew that most would want you to pay for them as you would expect. This generated a lot of calls but not many good results. But if you have a bit of time on your hands you may try this. If you do, be very prepared to answer some specific questions and you also need to ask some specific questions. You need to decide ahead of time how much you will tell people you will pay for their books. You need to make this clear before you spend your time driving across town (or out of town) to look at some books and you need to make sure this price is clear and acceptable to the other person. I had one person tell me he would ‘make it worth my while’ to come look at his 40 or 50 books. I was accustomed to telling people I would give .50 to $1 apiece and in some cases as high as $2 a book. When I came and looked at this person’s books and told him how much I normally give, he backed out and said he wasn’t interested. Fortunately I didn’t drive far to look at these. But I learned something else too – I learned that some hunting books are worth some money. This person kind of clammed up after I offered a dollar a book so I don’t really know what he meant when he told me he would ‘make it worth my while’. People will also ask you what kind of books you are looking for. I would always make it clear that I wanted non-fiction only. It’s funny how people read your ad saying you want non-fiction books and they are calling because they have boxes and boxes of romance books they want to sell you. I always made it clear I didn’t want Readers Digest, Time Life, or National Geographic published books. I explained the reason – I am buying books for resale and the book has to be worth a few dollars in order for me to spend my time marketing and selling it. And the publishers mentioned earlier typically print large quantities of their books so there are a lot of them out there (big supply) and there is not enough demand for them. That’s why I don’t buy fiction either. There are exceptions of course but it is a general rule of thumb. If someone calls you and say they have ‘a thousand’ books for sale (like someone did me that lived 50 miles away), you should probably ask, since it is such a large quantity, have they been stored inside or outside. In my case, these books were in a storage shed and some had water damage. About half were Reader’s Digest (even though I said I couldn’t use them) and about 200 were fiction. Of the 300 left, there were maybe 50 -100 books worth taking and of those I got rid of about half or more. Fortunately I only gave $20 for them (plus $25 worth of gas and 2 ½ hours of time).

I did buy some books from one guy this way that I have already got my money back plus some but I finally stopped using this method of getting books – it was just too time consuming. However, it may work if you don’t mind taking all the calls and being very selective about which books you would go look at in hopes of getting that one call that would be a goldmine. I never got that call.

7) BIG CHAIN BOOKSTORES CLEARANCE SHELVES
Some booksellers find books they can use at their local big chain bookstore. Though I have visited these stores a few times I had never found anything I could use there – until recently. I just happened to stop by one of these chain stores and found some books seriously reduced. I picked up a few bargains but it has only happened one time for me.

REMAINDERS
These are typically books from publishers where they printed more copies than they have sold (or can sell through their normal channels). So they sell them at seriously discounted prices. Normally you see these books at mark down tables of bookstores and they have a black magic marker mark on one or two edges called a remainder mark. To be profitable at all, you need to buy these from a publisher or a remainder book dealer – not from your local big chain bookstore. This is not a channel I have used to get books. I understand it is pretty competitive and you have to generally buy large quantities. From what I have seen, by the time the book has reached this stage, it is already selling on Amazon for pennies on the dollar.

9) CLASSIFIED ADS
This is different than what I mentioned earlier where I placed an ad in the paper saying I wanted books. This is where people advertise that they have books for sale. I want to address two sources of classified ads – local newspaper and CraigsList.com. Sometimes people will advertise books for sale in the newspaper (under ‘Articles for Sale’ in my paper). I haven’t seen it yet but people do use Craig’s List to sell all sorts of things so you may check that source in your locale.

10) EBAY
Some people use this but the competition is stiff and it is like looking for a needle in a haystack – it’s time consuming. There are also Bulk lots of books sometimes on the bay.

11) LOCAL LIBRARY
This is different than Friends of the Library sale mentioned earlier. Some local library branches will sell used books for around a dollar. These are typically books they have too many duplicates of or books donated to them that they can’t use. Call your local branch about this.

06/08/2010 Hardback Fiction new releases

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Hardback fiction new releases:

06/08/2010

Dragon Souls (Jaida Jones/Danielle Bennett)*

Wanted (Pretty Little Liars Series #8) (Sara Shepard)

Stranded (J.T. Dutton)

Taking of Libby, SD (David Housewright)

Raised By Wolves (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)*

Heart to Heart (Lurlene McDaniel)*

Insatiable (Meg Cabot)

How I Made it to Eighteen: A Mostly True Story (Tracy White)

Speak No Evil: A Joe Donovan Thriller (Martyn Waites)

Buy Back (Brian Wiprud)

Dog Blood (David Moody)

Every House Needs a Balcony (Rina Frank)*

Book of Shadows (Alexander Sokoloff)

The Passage (Justin Cronin)*

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: The Laughing Corpse Book 3: Executioner Vol. 3 (Laurell K Hamilton)

A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)*

A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery (Carola Dunn)

Cut, Paste, Kill: A Lomax and Biggs Mystery (Marshall Karp)

The Secret to Lying (Todd Mitchell)*

Death Echo (Elizabeth Lowell)

The Lion (Nelson DeMille)

The Bohemian Girl (Kenneth Cameron)

Deception (Haunting Emma Series #1) (Lee Nichols)

June 10, 2010

Neighborhood Watch (Cammie McGovern)*

* Added to my TBR list

WSJ and NYT Hardback Fiction Best Seller Comparison

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Here’s the weekly comparison of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times Top 5 bestsellers in Fiction Hardback.

*New this week

** #8 on WSJ

*** # 6 on WSJ

Review: “Little Women and Werewolves” by Louisa May Alcott & Porter Grand

Friday, June 4th, 2010

I was wandering through the library when a title leapt off the table at me. It was one of the recent parodies – genre benders I’ve heard them called. I had found “Little Women and Werewolves” by Porter Grand (& Louisa May Alcott).  I was hesitant.  Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good vampire or werewolf story. I just didn’t see the point of spoiling a beloved classic.  And “Little Women” is definitely a personal beloved classic. But a combination of morbid curiosity and boredom tipped me over the edge.

“Little Women and Werewolves” wasn’t a complete devastation like I halfway expected. All the important characters and events were present, more often than not, verbatim to the original. Meg’s experience of being dressed up at the ball had an extra twist. Beth’s death was much more, well, dramatic. Amy and Laurie’s engagement involved a little extra incident.  But the werewolf element felt forced. It read like the result of a junior high English assignment: “How would you have written a classic literary piece differently?”  I know; it’s a parody. Subtlety and originality are not requirements.  I’m generally not a fan of parodies in any format which SHOULD have been reason enough to have left the book where I found it.

At best, I hoped to find a clever combination of my two favorite things – a literary version of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups – something I wouldn’t partake of daily but is a nice little treat on occasion. At worst I figured I’d finish off a terrible story and could bemoan the butchering of the poor little women. Instead I found a boring, awkward hodgepodge.  In the future, I will stick with pure genres for my reading indulgences.  If I want werewolves, I’ll find an original story. And if I start missing the March family, Ms. Alcott provided more than enough to satisfy.

Dreaming of that perfect space

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Have you ever had one of those days when everything you sat down to compose, whether a blog post or business correspondence, was total and utter crap? When you wanted to wad up the piece of paper and in a fit of passionate disgust hurl it at the trash can across the room? (Somehow hitting the delete key isn’t quite as satisfactory.)  I am in the process of trying to capture my impressions of Spar by Kij Johnson.  It’s an…interesting…read and not very long. I need to re-read it again when not in throes of an allergy attack. Or maybe I should try reading it right after taking allergy meds. Hmm…

Anyway. That’s what I had planned for today and yet every draft has ended up in that proverbial trash can on the screen.  So instead, let’s talk about something very near and dear to my heart right now – our personal libraries & reading areas. Most of my library is still packed up in boxes awaiting the purchase of new bookcases.  However I now have my own personal reading space. Our new bedroom has a sitting area lower from the main room, complete with a built in bookshelf. I unpacked some books before we were fully moved in and my husband graciously agreed to put the recliner down there. The wall is lined with windows overlooking our backyard. All I need now is time to take advantage of my little personal space!  It’s nothing like Neil Gaiman’s reading area* but I’m content starting small.

How about you? Do you have dedicated spot for your library and reading? What would your dream personal library look like? (Mine would include a big comfy chair, floor to ceiling shelves, one wall of windows, and maybe a hidden room)

In the meantime, if you don’t have the space of a multi best seller author, CKY Books can help with any books you need to cull.

*Click on the picture to go to the full story, including close up shots.

Tomatoes, Squirrels and Books.

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

My father loves tomatoes. He grows them in several spots in his backyard, using special soil and a bunch of other stuff I don’t even pretend to comprehend. He prunes them back and ties the vines to special fencing and makes sure they get enough sunlight and water. I have even found him late in the evenings sitting in the middle of his tomato empire with salt shaker in hand and bucket of water humming a happy little tune with tomato juice running down his chin. It is pretty normal really, and the neighbors know not to worry. I’m sure one day that is where the nice young men in white coats will find him.

Of course with such a large supply of tomatoes he enjoys giving them to his neighbors by the carload, the mailman, the meter reader and any strangers who just happen to drive by slowly enough for him to get to their car window. He dearly loves to share his tomatoes – except, apparently, with squirrels.

Now I have nothing against squirrels, heck I think they are kinda cute. But apparently my father had a bad experience with a squirrel as a young man and is just not able to let it go. It possibly could have been the fact that the squirrels weren’t invited. They just showed up and began to help themselves. Regardless of the reason for their arrival, he determined they were not welcome. So he began a long, long line of squirrel deterrents. Each idea he tried was a little more over the top than the last. At first it was simply covering the plants with bags, which lasted about a day as the squirrels just crawled, under. Next was specially made mesh cages. Did you know that squirrels are really strong for their size? Yeah, If I ever go to jail I want a squirrel with me to bend the bars, or at least drive the jailer insane.
Next came, barbed wire, electrified barbwire, EMF pulses, high decibel frequency modulation output, pepper sprays, cayenne powder mixes and lastly a scary squirrel-scare-crow that moved and made noise.

I think the squirrels actually multiplied as word spread throughout all squirrel-dom of his attempts to keep them out. They most likely also appreciated the free tomatoes. Finally he decided on a much more rudimentary approach ala Elmer Fudd. (insert Fudd laugh here) So after purchasing a laser scope for his rifle and spending several hours precisely calibrating it, he then erected a squirrel blind – a huge cardboard box covered with mud and grass. The extremely direct approach of simply blowing their poor little fuzzy heads off was quite successful. The first evening he managed to massacre at least 5 of the poor little things. Without bothering you with the gory details of the slaughter, by the end of the first week he had managed to kill 21 squirrels. It was at this point the flaw in the plan was exposed. The lack of sleep from sitting up well into the night waiting for the squirrels to attack, possibly coupled with some phone calls from concerned neighbors about a guy in his pajamas discharging a firearm after midnight became a concern for the family and an intervention was planned. It was a simple intervention in which he was lured out of his tomato garden by the promise of a “supposed” door-to-door tomato supply salesman. At which point my brother simply hid his gun. We then introduced him to the wonderful world of live capture traps. You bait the trap, the critter runs in to get the food, the trap closes. You can then relocate the critter to a nice distant forest. After realizing this was a much better approach than doing another tour of duty in the tomato garden. My father rigged about a dozen traps at strategic locations, which he had marked on his map. This apparently showed where the squirrels thought he was weakest and often planned their attacks. He did at least realize finally he could sleep while the traps did their job.

Sometimes, however, things work too well. He soon found himself as keeper of about 8 unhappy live trap inhabitants. To keep this story short let’s just say that transporting live animals for relocation can pose a number of…problems.
The CKY Books warehouse is relatively close to where my father lives and I told him that we have lots of room around the warehouse, with no farms or produce but ample trees. He could release the cute little furry guys around here.
At first this seemed to be a perfect solution, and for the last month or so he has been transplanting a few squirrels a week to our general vicinity. Everyone who works here has enjoyed a lunch break while watching the new squirrel population.

Did you know squirrels are evil? They may be cute but that is all part of their natural defenses. Squirrels are also apparently very social and once the first one found a way into the warehouse he decided to share the route with all other neighboring squirrels. Not only are the evil, they seem to believe that pages from books make good nesting.

Tomatoes, Squirrels and Books don’t mix.

I’ve already got my traps on order.

Teaser Tuesday: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’m back this week with a  from the Nebula Award winner “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi. I haven’t actually started this one yet but I’m pretty sure everyone has read my CURRENT read…except me (Gaiman’s “American Gods”).

He ties the man quickly, blindfolds and gags him. A cheshire drifts close, watching, a molting of calico and shadow and stone.