Can You Really Make Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling them on eBay?

Hard-bitten American skeptic goes up against England's 'Superseller':
Guess who wins?

He gave up on selling books online.
But she claims to rake in the dough by offering book pages for sale.
Scam or the real deal?

Once, I bought an old newspaper that someone was selling on eBay.  It was dated in August of 1945, with a huge headline announcing the Japanese surrender ending World War II.

Now at the moment that newspaper came off the presses back in 1945, my dad was on a U.S. Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific. He had just completed his basic training ("boot camp") and was on his way to fight in the war.

Who knowns? That timely surrender might have saved his life.

The sweet thing about that particular newspaper was that it happened to be from my dad's own hometown, the same town where his new bride--my mom--was then living, awaiting his eventual return from the Navy.

Knowing that that particular paper would be drenched in personal meaning for him, I bought it and gave it to him as a gift on his 70th birthday.

As valuable a souvenir and historic artifact as that newspaper was, I was able to get it very cheaply from its eBay seller, because I was the only one who entered a bid for it.  While nice for me as the buyer, this helped convince me that anyone trying to make real money on eBay by selling "paper" – magazines, books, newspapers, etc. – was probably doomed to failure.

I'm happy to say that an English woman by the name of Avril Harper has blown my thinking out of the water and turned me 180 degrees around on this! (Here's her site if you want to check her out right now.)

I've tried to sell paper online myself – books, specifically. When Amazon started letting anyone sell used books through its  website, I jumped in with both feet and both hands. I began scouring yard sales and thrift stores for books I could pick up for a quarter or 50 cents, then resell on Amazon for $5 or $10 ... even, occasionally, for as much as $50.

For a couple of years I had great fun selling books this way, and it gave me a pretty good side income. But then something happened.

More and more people began selling books through Amazon. Soon there were hundreds selling the same titles, and asking prices dropped accordingly. Pretty soon you were seeing dozens of listings for used copies of the same books, with  sellers asking as little as 1 cent plus shipping for them! It was plain nuts.

I quickly realized that selling used books online was no longer a profit-making endeavor, at least not for me. Even on eBay you could (and can) find scores of out-of-print and even comparatively rare old books, in numbers so great that many failed to attract any bidders at all.

All this time, though, Avril Harper was raking in the dough--not by selling whole books, but by ripping them apart and selling the individual pages! And she's still doing it.

Now she's published an e-book explaining in exact detail not only how she pulls this off, but how anyone can duplicate her methods to make money, too.

The e-book is titled, "I Make Good Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling Them on eBay."

So what exactly is she talking about?  

Well, in brief, she's picking up old books, magazines and other printed material for cheap or free, then she's going through them and carefully removing the pages that she knows someone will pay good money for--things like prints (pictures) of particular subjects, maps and old advertisements.

Then she's advertising these things on eBay – and getting buyers left and right who are willing to pay her big money for them. (Click here if you want to read it in her words.)

The exciting aspect of all this is her contention that the field is wide open for others to duplicate her methods, not just in England but in the United States and other countries as well. 

In fact, she says the U.S. is especially ripe territory for someone to go gangbusters making money this way. She says there are many more potential buyers of paper ephemera in the U.S. than in her own country, as well as more sources of the old books and magazines which supply the "products" to be sold.

Here's what Avril Harper herself has to say:

"For the past few years I’ve been tearing up old books and magazines and selling them on eBay and generating very good profits. The entire concept has made me an eBay PowerSeller – three times over – yet I genuinely am just touching the surface of this exciting opportunity.

"There’s much more to this business than any one person can ever hope to tackle and the market is wide open for more people to copy me exactly and generate some extra spending money or even earn a full-time living this way.

"You will discover, in precise detail, exactly how to operate one or a string of eBay businesses, all selling individual items removed from old books, magazines and
newspapers, and how to turn almost every page of those publications into a profitable earnings source for you."

She points out that no special skills or knowledge are required. "All you need are the publications themselves and knowledge of what to do with them next, alongside a complete step-by-step guide to placing your ads on eBay at the right time, in the right place, at the right price. All this takes just a few minutes to do and costs very little."

As one who has been around the block selling things online, I can tell you that Harper has me excited about this business all over again. Her 83-page e-book is a no-fluff manual with exact, step-by-step instructions for selling pages from books and magazines and making huge profits.

She tells how you can easily sell not only prints and old advertisements to people who are hungry to buy them, but also newspaper clippings, advertising novelties, even old dress-making patterns.

As valuable as the information on what to sell, is Harper's advice on just how to sell it. Being a successful eBay seller is both art and science, and her hard-won knowledge in this area can keep beginners from making the mistakes that could sink what otherwise can be a hugely profitable venture.

Is there anything to dislike about "I Make Good Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling Them on eBay"?

Well, to be perfectly honest – if a bit picky – there are a couple.

A very minor "complaint" is that Avril Harper tends to discuss prices in terms of British pounds. That's only natural, because she is British, but it might be slightly disconcerting to some American readers to see that £ symbol sprinkled through the pages. After all, they want to learn how to rake in the bucks – the dollars!

The methods, though, are what count, not the currency used to illustrate them. As Harper says, the business of tearing up books and magazines and selling their "innards" is wide open in the U.S. and likely is even more so here than it is in England. So, if you need to, just visualize $$$ whenever you encounter a £!

My other gripe is slightly more serious. That is the fact that this e-book does not really give instructions on how to mount the prints and advertisements that you will be selling, although the author says that this will make them more attractive to eBay buyers and will increase your profits many times over.

Fortunately, mounting is simple--I've done it many times with photographs of mine that I entered in local photography contests. Mounting materials are cheap and easy to come by, and you can find exact instructions all over the Web.  So, this one small lack in Harper's e-book should not deter anyone from putting her methods into action.

My recommendation?

Get "I Make Good Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling Them on eBay" if you have even the slightest desire to start making some serious money online, doing something that is fun and easy. It's 99% of everything a book on this subject should be, and you probably won't even miss the other 1%.

As for me, I plan to start ripping up books this evening.

Click to learn more:

Make Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling them on eBay