Textbook clearance

I'd heard of, but never used, half.com before. It's owned by Ebay and is similar thereto: it caters to books and book-like merchandise, and instead of auctioning, one just lists the item at a set price, then it sits there forever until someone nibbles. There's no cost to list, but when your book sells (and someone pays for it), Half takes 10-15% of the selling price. Buyers pay the site, then the site takes their cut and deposits the remainder into the seller's account, plus a couple bucks to cover shipping.

It seems like a good system; many of the sellers appear to be big used booksellers (or fly-by-night drop shippers), but I've sold three books now with my small-number-of-feedback account - two to actual people and one to a 'super seller' who requested a drop-ship to the real buyer. The prices amaze me (so do Ebay prices) sometimes - many books are listed at near or above the Amazon price, though few sales appear to occur there. I sold two used physics textbooks for about $50 each (after the fees and shipping), and just sold the third, which sells new on amazon for $110, for $85 (say, $75 after fees). I wouldn't normally be motivated to offload old textbooks, but 75 bucks buys me a nice new used chunky cell biology text.

By the way, Joe, if you need your copies of Griffiths or Bernstein, you can have mine.