Selling Second Hand Books

[NeonSoda]

After an extended period of study, I have a lot of books. I also have a bit of a book-buying habit because I just like them so much. But I really need to get my collection under control a bit and skinny it down to just my favourites (I still have a lot of favourites...).

Where is good to sell reasonably specialist books? Most of them are related to art or history, with odd other vaguely-related subjects.

I don't mind if they sit for a while before they sell, I have the shelf space, but I'd like to try and list them somewhere that they have a chance of moving within, say, a year.

Thanks!

Have a look at Abe Books

Just had a look and sadly it's got fees of £17 per month. I'm not sure that would be viable for the relatively small volume of books I have.

Ziffit buys second hand books
There is no charge, you just scan the bar code to get a trade in price

I'm sure when I was a student, Blackwell's used to buy books if they relate to an academic subject. I was a poor student, so I bought a lot of mine second hand through them as well. Might be worth investigating?

I've used We Buy Books a few times. Some books you'll only get 20p for but others can be a few quid depending on the titles. It seems to offer more for more unusual or niche titles. The money usually comes through quite quickly. Not a fortune compared to what you would have paid in the first place but can be worth it, especially if you have quite a few to get rid of.

Ziffit, Music Magpie, We Buy Books are all easy ways to get rid of books fast. Scan them in to all three apps as some will give you better prices or refuse ones that others won’t.
The money is crap though. I was offered £5 for a £45 book.
Other than that - eBay for expensive books?

I think your best bet is ebay but don’t expect to get a lot for them. Are they suitable for A level students? If so you could simply offer them to your local school for their library, but they won’t pay you for them.

Can you sell them to the people doing the same course that you studied and bought the books for? When I was at university, people would put notices up selling their textbooks to newer students.

I'm sure there's an online way of doing this now. Or perhaps FB marketplace, any recent students or parents of students know?

I think they only buy textbooks, but I will look. Thank you.

Sadly and tragically I think there are only six schools running art history a levels in the country.

Sadly not. Art history doesn’t have set texts as such, you tend to build your own library around your specialist interests.

there aren’t really “textbooks” for art history, so not really any that could be considered good starter books (plus alot of mine were for my masters and PhD).

If you end up giving some to charity and they are niche in nature Oxfam have book stores and sorters who distribute the books to get the maximum return for the charity.

Are any of them Open University recommended texts? There are (or used to be) a fair number of people doing art history for fun with the OU (fewer now it's so expensive of course but maybe it's still a bargain if you're retired).

No, the OU supplies all its set texts to students studying humanities.

They are mostly texts from research masters and PhD level.