Sell Textbooks

Selling your used textbooks at the end of the semester is a great way to help raise money to buy your textbooks for the next semester.  In the past, the only viable places to sell used textbooks were your college book store or a private book store off campus.  While these options are convenient, the buy back prices offered for your books are usually quite low compared to what you paid for the books originally – even if you originally bought them used.  Luckily, two options for selling textbooks online have become very popular and offer you a way to recoup much more of what you originally paid for the books:

Sell Textbooks to an Online Bookstore – Selling your textbooks to an online book store is a good option if you need money for your used textbooks as soon as possible.  Online book stores that buy textbooks normally give you an offer for your books right away.  If you accept it, they buy your book from you and mail you a check after you ship them the book.  While their offers are normally a good amount higher than what you would receive in your school book store, you can almost always make even more money using the next option.

Sell Textbooks Directly to Students – Selling your textbooks to other students online is as simple as selling books to an online book store, but you can make much more money on each book you sell because there is no middle man.  The drawback of this method is that you have to wait for someone to buy your books once you list them.  Depending on how you price your books, their popularity, and the time of year you sell them, they will often sell in just a matter of hours to days.  Every once in awhile, you will be selling a book that is not used as much any more, or you are selling at a time when classes aren’t begining, so the book may not sell right away.  You could always delist books that don’t sell and sell them to online bookstores for immediate offers to make this method much less risky.

In the next few articles, I will give a step by step walk through of each option from sign up to actually shipping a book and receiving your money.