by Raffi Varoujian

Created on: December 08, 2009

INTRODUCTION

Totally fed up with trying to sell second-hand books for anything close to a profit on eBay, shuddering at the prospect of shivering my nads off at a car boot sale, and loathe to donate the whole lot to charity, I was struggling to find an easy and economical way of selling the large collection of unwanted books cluttering up our house.

I am already a member of Read It Swap It, but this was an exercise in reducing the number of tomes across the length and breadth of our household – not just exchanging them for new ones. Finally, I found a web site that seemed to offer a happy balance between effort and reward –

www.greenmetropolis.com.

WHAT IS IT?

Green Metropolis is not a bookshop per se. They do not hold stock - but act as a facilitator between buyers and sellers of second hand books. The concept is simple. Sellers can list their books on the site for a maximum price of £3.00, and buyers will pay a maximum of £3.75 for a book bought from the site. There are no further fees for listing or completing a sale.

Sellers are only allowed to charge postage if the book is larger than a normal paperback. Five pence (5p) from each transaction is donated to The Woodland Trust (for more info on who they are and what they do visit their web-site at: http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk) and the remaining seventy pence (70p) is Green Metropolis’ margin to keep.

The main difference between Green Metropolis and auction sites such as eBay is that while eBay only act as a facilitate to bring buyers and sellers together, Green Metropolis actually owns the relationship. As such, if there is any problem with your transaction, it is Green Metropolis who take responsibility for sorting it out – something eBay notoriously and assiduously refrain from doing.

To this end, Green Metropolis offer a “Buyer Promise” – in other words, if there is any problem with the book you ordered, you will get a refund or a replacement free of charge. The other unique selling point is the whole ethos of the site – to encourage book lovers to recycle books instead of buying new ones

HOW DOES IT WORK?

> Selling

There is no minimum number of books you need to get started - one will do. Registration is free and easy and you will be ready to sell books in a matter of minutes. You add a book by entering its ISBN number (usually found above or below the bar code on the back cover) and the site will try and match it to its database. As a

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