Confessions of a used-book salesman. – By Michael Savitz – Slate Magazine.

I have seen people at Library Sales scanning books. I see now what they are doing. Using an App they check Amazon to find out how much profit they can reasonably make from a book. They then can buy the book, put it up for sale on Amazon, AbeBooks and Alibris and make a profit. It seems like a good little business.

The app can be expensive. You also need a smart phone with web access. The monthly cost of the business has to be around $200 counting cell phone, gas and minor annoyances. If you make  a buck a book you need to sell 200 books a month or 6 or 7 a day. That means that each week you need to come up with more than 50 books to sell.

If you limit yourself to books with a profit of $5 or more you should be able to get by on 40 books a month. I think I could do 20 books a week from garage sales.

This might be my retirement job. At least I can read the books I before I sell them.