At the end of this semester I was left with some books that my college’s book store wouldn’t buy back from me for a variety of reasons (they had reached their quota on that book, the instructor was using a new book next semester, etc.) I needed to get rid of a few so I looked for places online I might sell. I had used Amazon to sell things before (books, actually) so I quickly found myself there.
It was extremely easy to list my books—all I had to type in was the ISBN and it knew everything about my book—and they were listed in just minutes. Amazon shows you their prices for the book, as well as other individual sellers’ prices to help you decide how much you want to sell yours for.
Within two hours I got an e-mail from Amazon informing me my Calculus book had just sold and I should ship now—the money was already in my Amazon Payments account. The only complaint I have about the whole process is Amazon’s high fee for using the service. I listed my book for $85 and in the end I received $73.90. Not that bad but still.
All in all I’d give Amazon Marketplace a pretty high ranking. It’s almost too easy. I barely had to do anything but list it and ship it. If you’ve got a few extra textbooks (or anything, really) laying around you want to get rid of quick, Amazon Marketplace is a good place to do just that. You’ll need an Amazon account but who doesn’t have one these days?
What other places online would you recommend to college students for selling textbooks?
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Half.com is also a place to sell them on. The only tip I would make is that to never settle on the price that the book buyback sites will give you. You can always get much more on the marketplaces.
Adam: Thanks for the reply! To be honest, I just had forgotten about Half.com. I used to use that site to find really good deals on things several years ago. The fact they’re affiliated with eBay makes it really easy to get a great deal.
You can also try using http://www.bigwords.com They are a textbook search engine that searches all the online retailers (including those already mentioned here) and rental sites to find you the best prices. But you can also use them to search for resellers to sell your book to.