If you’ve got lots of secondhand books you want to sell it might be worth considering setting up an online shop. This article looks at which is the best site to sell books online, comparing their charges for setting up your shop and posting items for sale. Looks at eBay, Amazon, Abe Books, Alibris and Biblio.
The simplest way to set up an online bookstore is to create a selling account on an existing bookselling platform such as eBay or AbeBooks. This makes it dead easy to list your items and the host platform brings in the customers and takes care of most of the effort of marketing your shop and listings.
Before you start though you need to be sure you’re going to bring in enough each month to cover the various fees and commissions charged by the platform, plus enough extra to make it worth your while spending the time.
This post give a comparison of the fees currently charged by the main 5 platforms you may wish to sell your secondhand books on.
AbeBooks – The seller fee is from £17 per month for listing up to 500 books, plus 8% commission on each item you sell. The commission applies to the total payment including postage, and is charged at minimum 30p per book. There is also an additional 5.5% service charge if your buyer pays by credit card (minimum service charge 60p).
AbeBooks is an Amazon owned company.
alibris – their basic plan for ‘casual sellers’ with a shop of up to 1000 books, charges $19.99 annual fee, plus $1 per book sold, plus 15% commission (min 50c) per sale.
Alibris will also automatically display your items on partner bookseller sites. If your book sells on one of their partner sites the commission rate is 20%
Amazon – There are different plans available at Amazon depending on what you are selling and how many you expect to sell. As a small secondhand book seller, you’d be choosing between the Individual and the Professional plans.
On the Individual plan you pay 75p for each book you sell, plus commission, which for books is 15.3% of the total paid by the buyer, including shipping. Shipping rates are set by Amazon. Currently it’s set at £2.80 for a book sent standard rate within the UK (extra for expedited or overseas deliveries). If it actually costs you more than this to send your book you’d need to factor the extra into your book price.
On the Professional plan it’s 15.3% commission plus a £25 monthly fee rather than the 75p per item fee. On this plan you get access to various Amazon features like better search visibility and advertising options. However, there is no point considering the professional plan unless you expect to sell at least 35 books per month.
Biblio – Booksellers have a choice of 2 plans.
option A: Commission-only listings. 12% of the sale price, including shipping fees (minimum 25c per book). If you choose to have Biblio process your payments you will also pay an additional 5% + 35c admin fee per transaction.
option B: £10 monthly subscription fee plus 8% sales commission. On this plan if you choose to have Biblio process your payments you will also pay an additional 5.5% admin fee per transaction.
Under option B, if you don’t sell any books in a given month Biblio give you a credit of the monthly fee to spend on books from other Biblio sellers.
eBay’s charges are complicated! I’ve summarised how they stand at the time of writing. (This is the new eBay system as of 2021 with eBay managing all payments rather than allowing sellers to take payments direct to their own paypal account. You may find that you’re still on the old system with an option to manage your own payments, but if so you’ll soon change over.)
ebay private seller plan – It’s free to create up to 1000 basic listings as a private seller on eBay. Listing charges only apply if you upgrade, for example by setting a buy-it-now price, or promoting your ad in some way. If a book sells you pay a commission of 12.8% on the full value of the sale, including shipping, plus a sales charge of 30p.
eBay Shop – for a basic eBay shop there’s a fixed monthly fee of £25 plus a 30p sale fee for each completed sale. You will also pay a 9.9% sales commission on the final selling price including any shipping charges. (Commission for shops varies depending on what you’re selling – for books it’s 9.9%.)
The basic shop fee of £25 covers you for listing up to 250 fixed price items, plus 50 auction items. If you want to list more books there’s a 10-15p additional cost per item, or you can upgrade your shop to the next level but then the monthly fee becomes significantly higher at about £70.
Again there are various options if you want to promote individual listings to get more views, all of which incur additional fees.
So how does that work out? What’s the best site to sell books online in terms of the costs and likely earnings?
Well here are some simple but reasonably realistic examples of how your earnings might stack up across the platforms. In example 1 you sell 10 of your books in a month at an average of £5 each. Example 2 shows what happens if your average price is double that at £10 a book. Example 3 shows your earnings if you double the number of sales – 20 books at average £5.
In all cases let’s say you charge £3 shipping per book, which you’ve worked out is cost-price.
NB These figures do not include any extra third-party charges you may incur for finance fees or any listing promotions you opt for.
Here’s what you’d earn per month on each platform under example 1, 10 books a month at £5 each:
| Platform | Money in | Monthly fee | Commission | Sale fee | Shipping | Total costs | Net Earning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biblio Plan A | sales £50, shipping £30 = total £80 | – | £9.60 | – | £30 | £39.60 | £41.40 |
| eBay Private Seller | sales £50, shipping £30 = total £80 | – | £10.20 | £3 | £30 | £43.20 | £36.80 |
| Biblio Plan B | sales £50, shipping £30 = total £80 | £10 | £6.40 | – | £30 | £46.40 | £33.60 |
| Amazon Individual | sales £50, Amazon set shipping £28 = total £78 | – | £11.90 | £7.50 | £30 | £49.40 | £28.60 |
| Abebooks | sales £50, shipping £30 = total £80 | £17 | £6.40 | – | £30 | £53.40 | £26.60 |
| Alibris | sales £50, shipping £30 = total £80 | £1.67 | £12 | £10 | £30 | £53.67 | £26.33 |
| eBay Basic Shop | sales £50, shipping £30 = total £80 | £25 | £7.90 | £3 | £30 | £65.90 | £14.10 |
| Amazon Professional | sales £50, Amazon set shipping £28 = total £78 | £25 | £11.90 | – | £30 | £66.90 | £11.10 |
Here’s example 2, 10 books per month, average £10.
| Platform | Money in | Monthly fee | Commission | Sale fee | Shipping | Total costs | Net Earning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biblio Plan A | sales £100, shipping £30 = total £130 | – | £19.20 | – | £30 | £49.20 | £80.80 |
| Biblio Plan B | sales £100, shipping £30 = total £130 | £10 | £12.80 | – | £30 | £52.80 | £77.20 |
| eBay Private Seller | sales £100, shipping £30 = total £130 | – | £20.40 | £3 | £30 | £53.40 | £76.60 |
| Abebooks | sales £100, shipping £30 = total £130 | £17 | £12.80 | – | £30 | £59.80 | £70.20 |
| Amazon Individual | sales £100, Amazon set shipping £28 = total £128 | – | £23.80 | £7.50 | £30 | £61.30 | £66.70 |
| Alibris | sales £100, shipping £30 = total £130 | £1.67 | £24 | £10 | £30 | £65.67 | £64.33 |
| eBay Basic Shop | sales £100, shipping £30 = total £130 | £25 | £15.80 | £3 | £30 | £73.80 | £56.20 |
| Amazon Professional | sales £100, Amazon set shipping £28 = total £128 | £25 | £23.80 | – | £30 | £78.80 | £49.20 |
And here’s example 3, 20 books per month, average £5.
| Platform | Money in | Monthly fee | Commission | Sale fee | Shipping | Total costs | Net Earning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biblio Plan A | sales £100, shipping £60 = total £160 | – | £19.20 | – | £60 | £79.20 | £80.80 |
| Biblio Plan B | sales £100, shipping £60 = total £160 | £10 | £12.80 | – | £60 | £82.80 | £77.20 |
| eBay Private Seller | sales £100, shipping £60 = total £160 | – | £20.40 | £6 | £60 | £86.40 | £73.60 |
| Abebooks | sales £100, shipping £60 = total £160 | £17 | £12.80 | – | £60 | £89.80 | £70.20 |
| Amazon Individual | sales £100, Amazon set shipping £56 = total £156 | – | £23.80 | £15 | £60 | £98.80 | £57.20 |
| Alibris | sales £100, shipping £60 = total £160 | £1.67 | £24 | £20 | £60 | £105.67 | £54.33 |
| eBay Basic Shop | sales £100, shipping £60 = total £160 | £25 | £15.80 | £6 | £60 | £106.80 | £53.20 |
| Amazon Professional | sales £100, Amazon set shipping £56 = total £156 | £25 | £23.80 | – | £60 | £108.80 | £47.20 |
In all these scenarios Biblio’s two plans and the eBay private seller programme would earn the most.
The eBay and Amazon professional plans are consistently the least profitable.
But you would need to have a look at your own anticipated sales and pricing and also take into account the much larger number of potential customers on the bigger platforms of eBay and Amazon.
Personally, if I was to go for just one I’d say eBay, specifically the eBay private seller plan is the best site to sell books online. If you’re inclined to try a couple of sites, the most obvious second choice is Biblio’s commission-only Plan A.
If you want a simpler way to sell books online check out my posts on selling to online book buyers