Where to Sell Books Online: AbeBooks, Amazon, eBay, Vinted and Buy-Back Sites Compared

The best place to sell books online depends on the book. A signed first edition, a box of paperbacks and last year’s chemistry textbook each have a different buyer, and each buyer shops in a different place. This guide compares AbeBooks, Alibris, Amazon, eBay, Vinted, Facebook Marketplace, Kleinanzeigen and buy-back sites, with fees taken from each company’s own pages on 9 November 2026.

We make FLUF Connect, a tool for listing the same items on several marketplaces. Most of this guide is about the marketplaces themselves.

What Is the Best Place to Sell Books Online?

A simple rule: look up the book’s sold price on eBay before you choose. If similar copies have sold for more than about £10 or $10, list it on a marketplace. If they sell for a pound or two, a buy-back quote is usually worth more than your time.

Where Should You Sell Rare and Collectible Books?

Collectors of old and scarce books shop on specialist marketplaces, where they can search by edition, binding and condition. The biggest is AbeBooks, owned by Amazon, which sells rare, used and new books, fine art and collectibles to buyers worldwide.

AbeBooks is for businesses. Its seller page says you must be “a professional bookseller with an established business”. You also agree to handle orders within four days, answer buyers within two days, accept returns and ship internationally. If you sell books part-time from home, it may not accept you.

Its fees are clear. The US Basic plan has no monthly subscription and charges $1 per book sold plus 15% commission, falling to 10% on the part of a price over $500. The UK Basic plan charges £0.75 per book plus 15%, falling to 10% above £385. Larger sellers pay a monthly subscription on the Premium plan, from $25 or £17, for an 8% commission plus a payment processing fee.

Alibris is the other well-known marketplace for used and rare books from independent sellers. Check its seller pages for the current fees before you apply.

For private sellers, eBay is the practical choice for anything collectible. Book collectors search it, auctions let buyers set the price of something unusual, and you can sell a single item without a business. Photograph the title page, the copyright page and any damage, and give the edition and printing in the title.

Selling other old and collectable things alongside your books? Our guide to where to sell antiques compares auction houses, Etsy, Catawiki and specialist sites.

What Is the Easiest Way to Sell a Box of Used Books?

Most used paperbacks sell for a few pounds or dollars, so the cost of listing and posting each one matters more than the fee rate. You have three options.

Sell them one at a time on a free marketplace

In the UK, eBay is free for UK-based private sellers. You pay no final value fee. On Vinted there are no selling fees. The buyer pays a Vinted fee of usually 3% to 8% plus £0.30 to £0.80 at checkout, and also pays for postage. Vinted is best known for clothes, but popular fiction and children’s books sell well there, especially in bundles.

In Germany, Kleinanzeigen is free for private listings, with a fee only if you post more than 100 listings in goods categories within 30 days.

Sell them as a lot to a local buyer

Facebook Marketplace and Kleinanzeigen work well for a box of books sold together. List them as “30 crime novels” or “Year 3 reading books”, add a photo of the spines, and let the buyer collect. You won’t get the best price per book, but you also won’t have 30 parcels to post.

Send them to a buy-back site

A buy-back site gives you a fixed price straight away and takes the whole box. World of Books, which now runs the service at the old Ziffit address, works like this:

1. Scan each book’s barcode in its free app, or type the ISBN on the website, and see the offer.
2. Print a free prepaid label and drop the box at InPost, or book a DPD collection from home.
3. Get paid within days by PayPal, bank transfer or cheque.
4. AbeBooks: sell books (UK)
5. Gumtree: ad promotion costs
6. Gumtree: can I pay for items on Gumtree

The same service runs in the US, with free USPS and FedEx labels and payment by PayPal, ACH transfer or check. Buy-back sites pay less than a marketplace sale, and they reject books they already have plenty of. Older books with no barcode can’t be scanned at all, and those are often the ones worth listing yourself.

Where Can You Sell Textbooks Online?

Textbooks lose most of their value when a new edition comes out, so sell as soon as you finish the course. Students buy just before term starts, which is when prices are highest.

A textbook is easy to list on Amazon. Amazon matches your copy to its catalogue by ISBN, so you choose the condition and set a price. The fees add up on a cheap book. In the US, the Individual plan charges $0.99 per item sold, books carry a 15% referral fee, and media items pay a $1.80 closing fee on top. The Professional plan costs $39.99 a month instead of the per-item fee. In the UK the Individual plan is £0.75 per item sold (excluding VAT), with the same 15% referral fee on books and a closing fee on media.

On eBay in the US, books are charged a final value fee of 15.3% of the total sale, plus $0.30 on orders of $10 or less and $0.40 above that. The first 250 listings each month are free.

For an older edition, or a textbook you just want gone, a buy-back quote takes a minute. Scan the ISBN, compare the offer with recent sold prices, and decide.

Where Can You Sell Books in the UK and Europe?

In the UK, AbeBooks is a marketplace for second-hand and antiquarian books. Its Basic plan has no subscription: according to AbeBooks’s own sell-books page, it charges £0.75 per item sold, plus 15% commission on the first £385 of each item and 10% above that. The page is aimed at professional booksellers, so check it fits how often you sell. For local sales, Gumtree serves UK buyers who want to collect; most services on Gumtree are free. Gumtree’s own checkout covers clothing, footwear, accessories and children’s items under £250, so for most books the buyer pays you directly.

Across Europe, the local classifieds sites are Kleinanzeigen in Germany, Marktplaats in the Netherlands, leboncoin in France and Wallapop in Spain, Italy and Portugal. They are general second-hand sites, so a box of books can sell alongside other household goods.

How Much Do Book Marketplaces Take From a Sale?

Here is what each marketplace would take from a $10 or £8 book, leaving postage aside and using the standard plan for a small seller.

eBay US charges its fee on the total the buyer pays, so the real fee is a little higher once postage is added. Amazon’s $4.29 on a $10 book is why cheap paperbacks rarely suit Amazon unless you sell in volume on the Professional plan. A $60 textbook is different. Its fees on the Individual plan are $9.00 + $1.80 + $0.99, which still leaves you $48.21.

Can You Sell the Same Book on Several Sites at Once?

Yes, and it helps a book find its buyer sooner. A collectible title might sell on AbeBooks to a collector abroad or on eBay to someone nearby. A textbook might go on Amazon in one week and on Facebook Marketplace the next. The risk is selling the same copy twice. If you list one book in three places, you need to take it down from the other two as soon as it sells.

That is the job FLUF Connect does. You create the listing once and send it to the marketplaces you choose, including AbeBooks, Amazon, eBay, Vinted, Facebook Marketplace and Kleinanzeigen. When the book sells on one of them, FLUF Connect takes it off the others. You need your own seller account on each marketplace, so for AbeBooks that means an approved bookseller account.

Typing in book details is slow, so FLUF Connect reads the barcode for you. If the ISBN barcode is in one of your photos, it fills in the title, author, publisher and ISBN. You add the condition and the price. Books with no barcode are listed from your photos and details in the usual way.

How Do You Get a Better Price for Used Books?

• Check sold prices first. Asking prices are what sellers hope for. Sold prices show what buyers pay.
• Describe the edition. Give the publisher, year, edition and printing. For textbooks, the ISBN on the back matters more than the cover.
• Be honest about condition. Mention notes, highlighting, a loose spine or an ex-library stamp. Returns cost more than a lower price.
• Bundle the cheap ones. A series or ten books by one author sells better as a set than one by one.
• Time it. Textbooks sell before term starts. Children’s books and gift titles sell before Christmas.

Selling in South Africa? See how to sell second-hand books in South Africa for Textbook Trader, Yaga, Bob Shop and local couriers. If you sell more than books, our crosslisting app comparison covers seven tools for listing on several marketplaces.