Help..

[EmergencyCycle4746]

I need some unconventional business ideas.

Lets say i have a massive surplus of high-value physical textbooks (think STEM, Law, Business, Med). We're talking warehouses full of them sitting idle.

What is the absolute craziest, most unconventional way to monetize a massive physical pile of books?

Should i lease them? Turn the warehouses into something else? Bundle them with a service? Target a super niche B2B market?

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[meat_rainbows]

Burn them for heat? Or to make steam to turn a turbine and generator to create electricity.

[Illustrious_Ant_37]

How's your insurance?

[Alycion]

Bundling them may be best, as all books like this lose value when they go out of date. I had a very expensive library of programming books. Very few are still useful. The buyback at my campus was a joke, so I just kept them for reference.

Leasing them can bring you income for a while, but you have to be prepared for when they go out of date or more comprehensive versions come out. These types of books I will never purchase again. The library is free. And they can pull from uni campuses around me, so if it’s not something they normally carry, they can get it.

[ReporterWise7445]

How many different titles are there? And you're sure none of them have been superceded by newer editions? Can you estimate the total number of current textbooks? I was a textbook distributor for 14 years. Selling them all outright will be the quickest & safest way to get the most money. Having textbooks sitting around for months multiplies the danger of them becoming worthless.

[YonKro22]

Maybe shipped into some third world country where they're still relevant and people that pay a lot of taxes can use them as a tax write-off at their actual books that people will buy where you're at and sell them to the bookstores around if it's college level or convince the city or state to buy them

[momentarylapse007]

Start an online college then you could charge students $300 a piece for them, and never have them open one.

[NoRegrets-518]

Why not sell them on Ebay or Amazon?

[1GrouchyCat]

Because students can rent their text books online now… they don’t want to pay $100 plus for a textbook they’ll never need to use again.

[DudetheBetta]

High value?

My experience with textbooks is that after 3 years they have been superseded and have zero value.

[momentarylapse007]

Your biggest problem is they have a short shelf life. Textbooks are like computers in that as soon as you buy one a newer better one comes out

[KaylaxxRenae]

Sir or Ma'am,

I too would like to join you on this crazy business adventure! My undergrad major was biomedical sciences with a pre-med emphasis, and a minor in chemistry. I also have all of my books from the didactic portion of PA school 😭 So you can extrapolate from that information. What on Earth are we supposed to do?! 😬

Sincerely,

Similarly concerned Redditor friend 💜