One of the best days for a college student is the day that they are completely finished with their final exams and they rush off and sell their used textbooks back to the school or other proximal bookstores. The relief of being done with classes and the chance to get a few extra bucks for those used textbooks is such a wonderful feeling and that night students usually use that money very “wisely” to relieve the stress of a work-filled semester.
This is a great thing for a poor, starving student, but unfortunately students often take the money that the bookstores offer them too eagerly. This article will be a brief discussion about how college students can make a little more money from selling their textbooks.
First things first, textbooks that are brand new – meaning that this is the first or second semester a university if using them – are golden. These books fetch the highest prices from the bookstores and are likely to be used for several semesters. Additionally, these textbooks have very few truly used books available, so the bookstores will pay a premium for them. But wait, you are saying that you had a brand new textbook that you paid $50 for earlier this semester, but the bookstore only gave you $15. Well, this concept only applies to books that are generally sold new for over $80 or $90. Books less than this will often be bought back from chunk change and you will not receive much for them from the bookstores.
So, what do I do with the 50% of textbooks that I have to buy each semester that do not fit into this category? The easy answer is, that there are a variety of ways you can get real money for these books. None of these ways really offer immediate gratification in the form of hard money for your textbooks, but a little patience can turn a $5 book (from the bookstore) into $20, $30, even more, depending on where you sell it.
If you like auctions, places like ebay are a great place to offer your textbooks, however, there is a flaw with this. Most auctions on ebay are time-sensitive, meaning that there has to be a buyer for your textbook. If you are selling your books from the fall semester, you usually will want to list them the week before classes start for the spring. This will give you the best return for your textbook. If you are selling your spring books, you should wait and list them right before the start of the fall semester, unless you know that your former class is being offered in the summer, and then the 1-week prior rule is a good rule to follow.
The other way to use ebay and other online auction sites is to simply open an ebay store. This method enables you to list your books in a never-ending format, however, the drawback is that you have to pay a monthly fee for your “store” and you also have competition from other sellers that list the same book (if there are any) as you do. Other online stores offer you a similar method to sell your books as does ebay, but without the “store” monthly fees. Sites such as Craigslist and Amazon offer you the ability to place your book in a listing format where you ask for a set price. The drawback is that people often will “undercut” you by offering their book for less than you. Thus, if you want a good price for your textbook, you either must be patient, or decrease what you want for your textbook.
The last means to get more for your textbooks that I will discuss is that of a textbook exchange service. Textbook exchanges are a relatively new concept, and they are not that popular at most college campuses yet. These offer a best-case scenario for college students as many allow you to both sell your textbooks to other students, or you can exchange a textbook for a book you need for your next semester. A good site is BookDefy and this site allows you to do both.
Why do these sites offer you a “best-case-scenario”? Well, the answer is simple, many professors require textbooks that change very little (consider English texts, MLA handbooks, math and chemistry). Most of these topics have few, if any, different topics or discussions. Now, the publishers will often change small things to attempt to force students to buy a “new” edition, but old editions will have the same content. Students who use these exchange services can actually exchange for an older edition of the textbook for a textbook that someone else needs. Although both students initially spent, probably a lot of money on their respective textbook, they can find each other via a site like BookDefy and neither student has to spend any more money on books. If you can’t find a student to exchange with, other students may either buy your textbook, or you can buy theirs and not worry about shipping and handling like you would probably with ebay, amazon or other sites.
In summation, just because the bookstores do not offer you decent money for your textbooks does not mean you should sell them back. There are many ways to turn those older, less “valuable” books into cold hard cash, and these are just a couple of the ways you can do this.
Source: www.articlecity.com
