The Best Places to Sell Your Textbooks (and When You Can’t)
Like the rest of the world, colleges have gone digital, although this change is very recent. When I was a student in 2013, almost all of my assignments were handed in on paper, but in graduate school in 2023, everything is handed in online. In just a decade, most of my coursework has gone digital, but not all. While sometimes I can work with a PDF file or rent an “ebook (text) book”, sometimes I still have to buy a real one. Over the past 10 years, they have not fallen in price. This means that even though most of your coursework and assignments have moved online, you can still end up ending the semester trying to sell your textbooks. Here’s where and how to do it, and when not to.
Sale of physical books
First, your college bookstore can buy paper books from you, but according to The College Investor , they probably won’t give you much money back. You can go to retail stores like Half Price Books or your local bookstore, or you can go online.
Use BooksRun if you just want to clean up the mess and get some cash. Enter the ISBN or book title on the main page and confirm the book you want to download. You will receive a shipping label that you can print so you don’t have to cover these costs and then you can just ship the book. Once it has been processed, you will receive a check or PayPal deposit.
Use Book Finder if you want the best price. The site collects offers from various bookstores, so you can find one that is willing to pay more than others for the texts you use, plus shipping is again paid for you.
Use Book Scouter if you are in a hurry and want to make more money. This site allows sellers to bid on your book so you can choose who you end up selling it to. It even has a mobile app where you can scan your text’s barcode to upload it for sale with minimal effort.
What and when to sell
It is important to sell on time. College Investor says “peak dates” for overselling have historically been May 4 to June 15, with May 11, May 18 and May 27-30 being named as the best days this year.
However, you can sell at any time, and you’ll also be lucky at the beginning of the semester, when students only know what books they’ll need in the next few weeks. If you’re selling early rather than late, consider posting texts on direct marketplaces like Facebook or Craigslist. Forgoing the middleman and selling directly to whoever is looking for that title will probably get you a better price as well.
Usually you can’t sell digital textbooks
Now for the bad news: if your class uses digital textbooks, you won’t be able to sell them, even if you “bought” them yourself. BooksRun explains on their blog that licensing issues are to blame: the company that sold you the digital text can’t know if you made a copy of it in some way, so they don’t want you to sell a book that you also saved to a hard drive. disk somewhere. The big difference between digital and physical copies of books is that physical copies wear out over time. The hardcover you are trying to unload probably has folded pages, a cracked spine, or marginal notes. He’s been riding around in your backpack for weeks or had coffee spilled on him during nighttime activities. An e-book, on the other hand, stays the same forever, and the companies that distribute it believe that luxury must come at a price. In short, they don’t want you to sell them, so there is no market for you.
What’s more, as Direct Textbook points out, you didn’t actually buy your digital textbook; you bought a license to use it. You simply have the right to view the materials, not the digital text itself. “Owning” an e-book is more like owning software than owning a physical book. You may not sell your licensed copy of Microsoft Word or your e-book to anyone.
This means that if you want a refund on your textbooks, you’ll have to buy physical copies at the start of each semester, and it’s up to you to decide if the ease of digital access outweighs your desire for a bit more. money back after final exams.