Sell books with World of Books

Review by eFreeware

If you have shelves of finished paperbacks, a stack of college textbooks nobody will read again, or boxes that have followed you through two moves, this app is built for you. Sell books with World of Books, formerly known as Ziffit, takes used books and textbooks and turns them into money without you having to photograph covers, write descriptions or field questions from strangers.

The pitch is deliberately narrow: scan barcodes, get a price, send the books off and get paid. That focus is the appeal, because the whole job can be done in an afternoon with a phone in one hand and a box at your feet.

It is a free download with no ads and no in-app purchases, which matters when the point of the exercise is earning money rather than spending it. The developer also promises an extra 10 percent on a first trade, a small nudge that makes an initial test run more attractive.

Scanning a shelf into a quote

The core loop is barcode scanning. You point your phone or tablet at the barcode on a book and the app registers the title, building up a trade as you work along the shelf. Doing this with a tablet is possible, though a phone is the more natural fit for something you carry from room to room.

What I like about this approach is that it removes the guesswork from clearing a collection. Instead of wondering whether a novel is worth the trouble of listing, you scan it and let the app decide. Books that come back with a figure go in the keep pile; the rest can go to a charity shop or a friend without further agonizing.

The app can also tell you what a collection is worth overall, which is a useful thing to know before you commit to anything. If you have inherited boxes of books or are clearing a house, that valuation step gives you a sense of whether the effort is worth your weekend before you start packing.

From quote to money in the bank

Once you are happy with the quote, you complete the trade inside the app. Shipping is covered, with FedEx or USPS handling the parcel, so you are not paying postage out of the money you just earned. That detail matters more than it might seem: on a modest trade, a shipping bill can wipe out the whole point of selling.

Payment goes to your bank account or your PayPal account, and the developer says money arrives within days rather than weeks. For anyone who has sold books the slow way and waited on a buyer to confirm delivery, that timeline is the main reason to consider a service like this.

It is worth thinking about the trade-off in value. A trade-in service sets the price, so you are exchanging the chance of a higher sale for speed, free shipping and no haggling. For most household clear-outs, that is a fair swap; for a rare or collectible title, it may not be.

What you need before you start

The requirements are modest. Textbooks and standard trade paperbacks are the obvious candidates; anything without a scannable barcode is harder to move through this route.

The app is free to download and free to use at every stage, so there is no cost to trying it on a single box before committing a whole room to the process.

The app was released in June 2019 and has been updated since, most recently with stability and performance improvements, so it is a mature tool rather than a new experiment. With more than 100,000 installs and a 4.2 average from 1,653 ratings, it has a reasonable track record behind it.

Best fit for a clear-out, not a collection

This suits people who want books gone and a little money back, in that order. Households clearing a spare room, students offloading textbooks at the end of a course, and anyone who has inherited a library they do not intend to keep will get the most from it.

It is less about maximizing what each title is worth. If you enjoy the hunt for a buyer, or you have a small number of valuable books you want to price carefully, the convenience here works against you, because the app sets the figure and you either accept it or you do not.

The free shipping and the payment options also tilt the app toward volume. A trade of one or two paperbacks is unlikely to be worth the packing, but a box of twenty is a different proposition, and the first-trade bonus softens the learning curve on that initial attempt.

A straightforward way to clear the shelves

Sell books with World of Books does one job and does it without charging you for the privilege. Scan, quote, ship, get paid: the sequence is short, the shipping is covered, and the money is promised within days to a bank or PayPal account.

I would point it at anyone with a genuine pile to move and no interest in becoming an online seller. The 10 percent first-trade bonus is a sensible way to test whether the quotes suit you before you scan an entire bookcase. If your goal is the highest possible price per book, this is not the tool for that job.

What's new in version 7.2.0 (#17562)

We've updated the app with some new features and improved stability and performance.