If you’re like me, you’ve managed to collect quite a few books over the years. 95% of them you’ll never read again. 20% of them you’ve never read in the first place. So why not clear up space on your bookshelf and convert those dusty old tomes into cold hard cash?

There are many options for selling books but my favorite is on Amazon. You can box them up and send them directly to Amazon but you’ll make exponentially more if you list and ship them yourself. Here is how.

1) Go to Amazon.com/sell

Scroll down to select the option for individual seller account. With this option, you opt to pay a higher fee per item sale rather than the $40 per month business account fee. Our goal here is to just turn the books we have in our home into some easy cash, so we’re not interested in the business account. The process for setting up an account is very easy and self-explanatory, so let’s move on to the process of actually selling and shipping the books

2) Gather the books that you want to sell, and find the ones worth listing

Once you have a pile of books that you would be willing to let go, log into your newly-created seller’s account and start typing in those ISBNs. Once you type in the ISBN, you’ll see the going prices for that particular book. Some books are simply not worth listing because of the shipping cost and the competition (more on that in a bit). Since you’re not a high-volume seller, you’re looking for books that will sell for at least $2.00 + $3.99 shipping.

3) Get your shipping materials in order

You need a few things to be able to ship your books to the people who buy them from you. The best package for a book is the bubble envelope. If you’ve ever bought a book online, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I buy mine from Wal-Mart in packs of 10, and the cost comes to about 40¢ per envelope.

You will need a printer to print the postage that you’ll purchase through Amazon’s system. Being the good coupon-printing Southern Saver that you are, that shouldn’t be a problem. You’ll need tape to put the label on the package. And you’ll need a scale so that you can enter the weight of the package to buy the postage. I use my digital kitchen scale.

4) Check out the marketplace, and list your book.

If you want the quickest sale possible, then you can simply list your used book for a penny less than the lowest other copy. If there are only a few used copies of the book, and Amazon’s prime price is a good bit higher than the used copies, then you can list higher than the lowest entry. Once the lower-priced copies sell, then (theoretically) yours will then become the lowest-priced copy; that is, if nobody comes along and undercuts your price in the meantime.

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