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How to sell books on eBay, step by step

Published October 13, 2026 11 min read

To sell books on eBay, first check that each book can pay for its own postage and eBay's fees. Then enter the number printed by the barcode (the ISBN) in the Sell form, pick a condition, photograph the book, set a price and ship it in a mailer you have weighed. That first check is what stops you listing books that lose money.

Postage and packing cost the same whether the book cost you a dollar or thirty. So the first step is arithmetic, not photography. Fees and postage change, so every rate here is a link, and every dollar figure in the examples is invented.

How do you sell books on eBay?

Six steps, and the first one decides whether you bother with the other five.

1. Look up sold copies and run the profit testFind what copies of the same edition sold for, then check the book leaves you a profit.
2. Start the listing from the ISBNChoose Sell, enter the ISBN, let eBay fill in what it knows, then check every field and the title against your copy.
3. Pick the condition gradeChoose the best grade whose whole definition is true of your copy, and write the flaws in plain words.
4. Photograph the bookCover, back, copyright page, and a close-up of every flaw.
5. Set the price and postageList at the middle of the sold prices, and decide who pays postage.
6. Pack, weigh the packed parcel, ship itPick the service on the label screen at the weight you measured.

No seller account yet? The Seller Center start-selling page covers that side.

Is this book worth listing at all?

Pick up the paperback nearest you and look it up. Search eBay for its ISBN or exact title and edition, filter to Sold items, and read the spread of totals (item plus postage charged) rather than one price. Compare like with like: the same ISBN, the same condition grade, and no lots or signed copies unless yours is one.

Now the test. eBay's final value fee is a percentage of the total sale, and that total counts the item price, any handling charge, any postage you collect and sales tax. A per-order fee comes on top, and Books & Magazines has its own row in the fee table. Take the typical sold total and subtract everything that comes out of it:

Profit = sold total × (1 − fee percentage) − per-order fee − postage − packing − what you paid

Here are two invented paperbacks. The fee percentage is 20%, picked so the sums are easy and not eBay's rate. The per-order fee is 0.50, postage is 4.00, packing is 0.50, and each book cost 1.00.

Book B sells and still loses money. That is the usual way a cheap book fails: the postage and the mailer stay the same size while the sale shrinks. Rule of thumb: decide your minimum profit per book before you start, and skip anything under it however well it sells.

Do the setup once. Write the fee percentage and per-order fee from the fee table on a sticky note, and get postage for your packed weight from USPS's price calculator. After that each book is two lookups, the sold total and the postage. Sales tax counts toward eBay's percentage, so your real profit runs a little under the sum. The flip profit calculator takes the same inputs.

Where do you find the ISBN, and what does eBay do with it?

An ISBN names one book in one format and edition, so a hardback and a paperback of the same title have different ISBNs (the ISBN Agency explains why). Look on the back-cover barcode and on the copyright page.

Enter it in the Sell form. If the book is in eBay's catalog, eBay suggests a match and fills in fields such as the photo and title. Then check every filled-in field against the book in your hand: author, format, language, year, publisher and edition. The ISBN finds the edition, not your copy, so it will not know about a signature, a library stamp or a missing dust jacket.

Read the title eBay generates, too. The title is what a buyer's search matches, and you get 80 characters, so use them and leave out special characters and irrelevant words. Keep eBay's suggestion as the base and make sure it carries the book's title, the author, the format (paperback or hardcover) and the edition. Those are the words someone hunting for your edition would type.

What if the book has no ISBN?

Books printed before ISBNs came into use have none, and a book with no ISBN can still sell:

1. Search sold items by title, author, publisher and year.
2. Fill in the item specifics by hand. Buyers use them to filter search results.
3. If eBay asks for a product identifier, choose "Does not apply" when the book has none or you aren't sure what it is (eBay allows this).

Which condition should you pick for a used book?

Condition is the next place a listing can cost you, so pick it cautiously. Work down from the top. The first grade whose every line is true of your copy is the one to pick.

A book with missing pages fits none of the five grades, so it is not a normal listing. The wording here is from eBay Australia's page, the only full copy of the book scale we could open. Your Sell form shows the grades your category supports, and if they differ from this table, follow the form.

What photos does a book listing need?

Start with the front cover, centered and filling the frame, because the first photo is the one that appears in search results. Then take the back cover with the barcode in view, the spine where binding wear shows, the copyright page so a buyer can match the edition to the ISBN, and one close-up for each flaw you wrote down: the scuff, the crease, the underlined page, the stamp. That matches eBay's photo tips: a centered first shot and close-ups of blemishes, damage and wear.

Use bright overhead light, with no flash and no filters. A photo of each flaw also makes the condition note easy to write, because you are describing what the buyer can already see.

How do you price a book and set postage?

List at the middle of your sold totals. Take the sold totals you found in the profit test, set aside the single highest and lowest, and price near the middle of what is left. Rule of thumb: start in the middle, not at the top.

Say the last six sold totals for Book A's edition were 9.00, 10.00, 12.00, 12.00, 14.00 and 15.00 (invented). The middle is 12.00, the figure the profit test used. Pricing from sold listings goes deeper on reading those comps.

Choose Buy It Now, a fixed price, for most used books. Auctions suit rare, limited edition or high-demand items, so save one for a book you cannot price from sold copies. If you turn on Best Offer, decide the lowest price you would accept before you list, using the profit test.

Sold totals include postage, so decide who pays it. If you charge for postage, subtract it from the middle total: with a 12.00 total and 4.00 of postage, the item price is 8.00 and the buyer still pays 12.00. If you offer free postage, price the item at 12.00 and the 4.00 comes out of your side. Buyers prefer free postage, but it may not be possible for every item, so choose what suits the book.

How do you pack and ship a book without losing the margin?

Put the book in a stiff mailer or a small box so the corners cannot bend. Wrap it carefully and securely seal every box or envelope.

Then weigh the packed parcel, not the bare book, and compare services at that weight. Media Mail is billed per pound or fraction of a pound, and any fraction counts as a whole pound. A parcel that weighs 1 lb 1 oz packed is billed as 2 lb, so a lighter mailer can take a pound off the bill.

Media Mail is for books of at least eight printed pages made up wholly of reading matter, with no advertising beyond incidental announcements of books. It is not sealed against postal inspection, and USPS does not guarantee a delivery time. Do not assume it wins on price: the USPS labels page lists Media Mail and Ground Advantage as separate services and calls Ground Advantage the best-priced option for lighter parcels. eBay's label service has its own rates, so the price on your own label screen is the one to trust.

For handling time, the days between payment and the carrier's scan, choose the quickest you can consistently meet.

Should you sell books one at a time or as a lot?

Sell a book alone when it passes the profit test. Group books as a lot when singles cannot, because one order fee, one packing job and one parcel are spread across every book. With the same invented numbers, ten singles carry 0.50 + 0.50 + 4.00 = 5.00 of packing, order fee and postage a book. One lot of ten in a single heavier box might cost 1.50 for the box, 0.50 for the one order fee and 12.00 for postage, which is 14.00 for all ten, or 1.40 a book.

A lot lowers what each book has to earn. It does not make the lot sell, and that is a demand question. One Amazon bookseller writes that eBay buyers pay more for lots of 20 or more books on one narrow subject than those books fetch singly on Amazon. It is one seller's experience, so check sold lots on your subject first and redo the postage at the lot's packed weight. Common titles grouped by subject, author or series have the best chance, and a random mix the worst.

Which books should you skip, and where else can they go?

Past a failed profit test, skip a book in two cases (a rule of thumb, not sales data). The first is many copies listed and few sold, which means buyers have plenty to choose from; the sell-through count shows how to compare the two. The second is a buyback offer or local sale that would pay more than any eBay sold price you can find.

BookScouter takes an ISBN and compares offers from buyback vendors, so there is no listing to write, and where to list compares other places by the kind of item. Donating is the last route.

What should a first-ten-sales sheet show you?

Which books pay, and what your time is worth. Keep one row per sale and take fees and postage from the order, not from memory. Here are the first five rows of such a sheet, with invented numbers. Fees are 20% of the buyer's total plus 0.50, as in the earlier example, and sales tax is ignored.

Net is what the buyer paid, minus fees, postage and packing, and what you paid for the book. Here 13.30 over five sales is 2.66 a sale, and 13.30 over 52 minutes is about 26 cents a minute, or about 15.35 an hour. The thriller lost 40 cents, and it is the book the profit test would have caught. Count every minute in your own sheet: the lookup, the listing, the photos, the packing and the trip to send it.

After ten rows, divide total net by total minutes. If that is below what your time is worth to you, list only books that clear a higher minimum. If it holds, widen the range. Ten sales is a small sample, so run ten more before you decide.

Today: pick one book off your shelf, look up its sold copies, and run the profit test with today's fee and postage. List it only if the profit clears your minimum.

Questions people ask about selling books on eBay

Keep reading

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• What you keep on a $40 sale

  Fees, postage, the mailer, the $5 tag. Then what is left.