Plus, also, used bookstores - a good place to recoup your investment.

Unless you're in the Bay Area. I've made about $250 selling books through half.com -- all books that I tried to sell at every single local used bookstore I could find. Local friends who've tried to sell report the same thing. My mom, who manages a used bookstore out in Concord, just sighed when I asked her about it and said yup, local economy still the shits, independent booksellers particularly hard hit, nobody's buying anything unless it's truly rare and collectible (if you have a complete run of McSweeney's you're willing to part with, or a signed first of a tiny handful of writers who are both local and big-name, those you can sell for money--everything else, NSM). They won't even take the books for free, because they need the space on their shelves.

If you just want to reclaim space: Goodwill, Salvation Army, hospitals, rest homes, homeless shelters. If you want a tiny crumb in cash or trade: Half Price Books. If you want an actual return on your investment: half.com, but be prepared to box up the books and wait weeks or even months for them all to sell.

YUsedBookMarketMV, of course. It's just the utter shits in Northern California.

The Used Book market around here revolves around the local university schedules. A month after the students have moved out? Don't bother -- they sold all their books for beer money as soon as finals were over and the market's glutted. Halfway through a given semester? You might make a few bucks. I think the most I ever got locally was $50, though, because I tend to love my books hard.

I've had much better luck selling through half.com than trying to sell directly to used bookstores. If a book doesn't sell after a few months, I usually leave it at my laundromat and put a note on Bookcrossing.

Heretically for a buffista, I almost never buy books I haven't read already. I don't need to own books unless I plan to reread them.

Flea is me. I pretty much re-read damn near everything I own at some point or another.

I know I *should* go to the library (because I'm almost out of space to keep books), but being able to go to a used book store and buy whatever books I wanted was a dream of mine when I was a starving college student/retail worker; now that I have a kinda/sorta steady job, I'm going to buy books, darn it!

JZ's analysis pretty much applies to New York as well. I've done much better selling on Half.com than I have in physical bookstores.

I'm trying out Ebay; the whole auctioning thing scares me, but there's one book without an ISBN that I can't sell at Half.com but should be able to auction off for at least a few hundred dollars. But I'm assuming I'll need an ebay history before anyone's willing to bid high.

Micole - you're in NY? Not that I want to go volunteering people for tasks behind their backs, but there are at least two NYCistas with decent Ebay histories; possibly one of them could sell it for you.

I am in NYC. If anyone wants to volunteer, profile addy is good; but I'm fine with building up a history. They seem to have transferred over half.com feedback, which is good, except that the last time I was selling I was severely flaky about sending stuff out on time. So I need to build up whuffie again.