Amazon Marketplace

I took a cue from Fearless Money and decided to start selling books online using Amazon's Marketplace. After my first book sold I was a little unhappy with the chunk--commission, excuse me--Amazon took out, but after Fearless explained his strategy further I decided that to make it worthwhile, I'd need to sell a certain type of book. Stay away from mass-market paperbacks, in other words.

At my place of employment--a university library--there are a few shelves of books in a conference room that are free for staff to take. They may have been taken out of the collection or were never added to the collection, or were sent as "samples" by publishers, but in any case, they aren't wanted for the stacks, and we've been told we're welcome to them. In the past I've brought books home for J, mainly astronomy stuff. But then it occurred to me--why not sell some of them? I took about 15 home and found that many of them were quite expensive to begin with, being academic titles, and so it was easy for me to come in at the lowest price. So far the highest price I've sold a book for has been $35. Amazon took out a sizable chunk--excuse me, commission!--but I still netted almost $29.

I'm assuming there's nothing unethical about my doing this, since the books were free to take (and had been there for a while). On the other hand, for some reason I do feel a little weird about it, though, and so I haven't broadcasted my activities to coworkers. Another part of me wishes I'd thought of this sooner, though!