Eleanore Mickus reported that the Friends reached a milestone this week — we listed the 5000th book on our Amazon online book store. “We listed our first book on September 12, 2011, so it’s taken a bit less than five years to reach this point,” Eleanore said. “This may not have taken a village but it sure took a lot of Friends, hundreds of hours of work, and much appreciated assistance from the library staff.”
In order to be listed in the online book store, books must meet certain criteria, so the book sale committee sorted and culled thousands more to reach this milestone. In case you’re curious, the 5000th book was a business law textbook. When priced right, textbooks can be good sellers in the online book store while they typically don’t sell in our semi-annual or ongoing book sales.
Not every book listed on Amazon sells. If they don’t sell in a reasonable length of time, we de-list them to conserve space in our workroom. Of the 5000 listed so far, we sold around 3000.
Of course, listing the books is just one step in the workflow. When we receive notice that books have sold, volunteers pick them up at the library, weigh, wrap, and deliver to the post office for shipment. The Amazon feedback and our five star rating prove that the online team is doing a fabulous job.
And it must be noted that the Friends book sale volunteers are a congenial bunch who insist on having a good time. If you’d like to be part of this effort, please contact us.