Who couldn’t use extra cash these days? And who wouldn’t love to earn it while surrounded by books? We found two companies that facilitate exactly that.
PangoBooks
PangoBooks is a used book lover’s heaven—er, I mean marketplace. Via their website and free app, you can buy or sell gently used (and sometimes signed!) paperbacks and hardcovers.
For sellers, it’s simple. Snap a picture of the book you’re trying to sell and scan the barcode to populate your listing’s information. When a buyer purchases your book, you’ll download and print the shipping label from the app and send the book on its way to its new owner. Unless you offer free shipping, the buyer will pay the shipping costs. From their FAQs:
PangoBooks charges a 20% sales fee for books that sell on our platform with a minimum fee of $0.40. You can make as many listings as you want for free and we only charge a fee for books that sell. We manage the full customer service experience for you and insure your orders up to $100.
Save those books you’ll never read again from a sad life of sitting on the shelf, untouched.
WordsRated
It’s a deal that sounds almost too good to be true: get paid $200 to read a NYT bestseller.
Truthfully, when I heard about this, I was skeptical. It’s an incredibly new website, so there are no reviews or testimonials. But wouldn’t you know it? Snopes has said it’s legit! And New Zealand’s The Spinoff did an excellent deep dive.
What you need to know is that you won’t just be reading these books. You’re helping this company do research on the specific books they send you (for free), so you’ll be collecting data and answering questions. Some examples you might encounter are:
- Locations where the story takes place
- Which books are characters reading or being referenced
- Number of certain words or phrases
- How many questions were asked in the book
- What animals are appearing in the book
This data is used to produce research articles that are are free and available to the public.
If you’re someone who will read anything and this sounds intriguing, apply soon—the first round of participants will be selected in June.
