Brits Turn to Selling Books in Cost of Living Crisis

Vicky Parry 15th Sep 2022 2 Comments

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This is a paid article for Webuybooks.co.uk.

Selling books. Book buying business WeBuyBooks released figures this week to show that more cash strapped Brits than ever are turning to them for some extra money.

With news last month that a second-hand Harry Potter book sold for £478 on eBay – after sparking a 45-way bidding war, we are all starting to look to our bookshelves for possible earners.

WeBuyBooks shared with us their stats from August 2022, showing that in these times of difficulty, people are increasingly clearing out and cashing their books in. It could be to do with the cost of living, or the additional expenses of having the kids at home, but more and more people are seeing the benefits of tidying their unwanted books into boxes and having them collected for cash.

Ben Wadsworth from WeBuyBooks sees books as a nice little way to make a little extra cash. “They are something we all have lying around, often gathering dust. Some are gifted and never read and some we grow out of. That makes them a perfect item to sell” .

How much do people make on average selling books?
Types of books you can sell

How Much do People make on Average Selling Books?

Last month (August 2022), over 14,000 people sold their books to WeBuyBooks, for a total of 350,000 books… and each of these sellers made themselves an average of £29.05 each: a nice rainy day fund.

When we tried the app, we had a pile of about thirty books and WeBuyBooks wanted about two thirds of them, at a price of £27, which was great considering the books we valued had been stuffed in a cupboard for years.

Once we had a tidy pile of scanned and approved books, we found a sturdy box with all the parts intact, packaged up our books carefully and printed out the contents list – which WeBuyBooks generates for you – popped it in with the books and secured the parcel with thick, strong tape so it wouldn’t pop open.

The money appeared in our account a few days after the package had been collected, which was almost as satisfying as looking at our now-tidy bookshelves and not seeing tons of books shoved in there. In fact, we’ve already started working out which books we STILL don’t want, and when we do, we’ll be using WeBuyBooks again.

Types of books you can sell

School or university text books are always in demand, as are fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. WeBuyBooks didn’t want (this time, anyway) some of the more obscure or niche biographies we had, or books they were clearly overstocked with. But in that case, you might try selling them on eBay, Amazon marketplace, Facebook or similar auction sites, because someone somewhere may want them!

Get started selling your books here.

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