by Dan Weaver

Created on: January 27, 2009

I have never had a problem finding places to buy good books, but finding good places to sell them is another story. One major difficulty is that what worked last year may not work this year. Therefore, any advice I give in this article may not be useful if you are reading it a year from now.

I have been selling books on the internet for ten years, and there are several sites I recommend for selling books. The first site,

Alibris, has two plans for sellers-Alibris Basic and Alibris Gold. Alibris Basic is for the casual seller, with less than 1000 books. Alibris Basic booksellers pay $1.00 per transaction and a $19.99 annual subscription fee, instead of a flat monthly fee.

Alibris Gold booksellers pay a monthly flat fee based on the number of books they list. This fee ranges from $9.95 a month for 0-500 books to $450 a month if you list over one million books. Both Basic and Gold booksellers pay a 15% commission for items priced $400 or less. For items priced over $400, sellers pay a flat sales commission of $60. Their is also a $19.95 non-refundable application fee.

The thing I like about Alibris is that Alibris has partnered with half.com, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million and several other companies. I can elect to have my listings show up on the partner sites. There are no additional monthly fees for signing up with most of the partners. Sales through these channels generally cost you an additional 5% in fees, however, there is no extra work on your part for listing on partner sites. When your books are uploaded to Alibris, they automatically get listed on the partner sites. You also access all of your orders through the Alibris seller hub, rather than the partner sites.

Alibris does have standards that you must maintain if you want to remain a seller. The primary one is that you must have an 85% fulfillment rate. While I sell a lot of books through Alibris and do recommend the site, there are some disadvantages compared to other bookselling sites. The main one is shipping reimbursement. While most sites allow you to set your own shipping rates, Alibris does not. Alibris does not remit the entire shipping fee to the seller. The amount they do give the seller barely covers the cost of shipping. If a book is heavy, the shipping costs will often be greater than the reimbursement. The seller must then decide whether to reject the order and lower his or her fulfillment rate, or ship the book and eat the extra shipping costs. On the other hand, all international

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