by When a college student has finished taking all of their final exams, one of the best days of their life is the day that they rush off to sell their used textbooks back to the school or to other nearby bookstores. This is one of the few occasions when a college student gets to make money off of their books. It is such a wonderful feeling to finally be done with classes, and the opportunity to get a few extra bucks for those used textbooks is such a wonderful opportunity. That night, students typically spend that money very “wisely” in order to relieve the stress of a semester filled with work-related obligations.
This is wonderful news for a financially strapped student who is nearing starvation, but regrettably, students frequently accept the money that retailers offer them too eagerly. This article will provide a succinct explanation on how college students can make a little bit more money from selling their textbooks and will focus on some of the options available to them.
First things first, the best textbooks are ones that have never been used before. This means that the university should be using them for the first or second semester. The likelihood that these books will be utilized for more than one academic year causes booksellers to demand the highest prices for them. In addition, there are extremely few legitimately used copies of these textbooks available, which means that retailers will pay a premium for those that are in good condition. But hold on, you are saying that you had a brand new textbook that you purchased earlier in the semester for the sum of $50, but the shop only gave you $15 in exchange for it? This idea, however, is limited to publications that may often be purchased brand new for more than $80 or $90. Books valued at less than this are not typically purchased back from chunk change, and the amount of money you receive for them from bookshops is not very high.
What should I do then with the fifty percent of required textbooks that do not fall into this category for each semester that I have to spend money on? The straightforward response to this question is that there is a wide variety of potential revenue streams available to you for these books. None of these strategies actually provides instant pleasure in the form of cold, hard cash for your textbooks; nevertheless, with a little bit of patience, you can transform a book that cost you $5 at the bookstore into $20, $30, or even more, depending on where you sell it.
However, if you are someone who enjoys participating in auctions, websites such as eBay are an excellent location to sell your textbooks for sale. There is, however, a problem with this strategy. The majority of auctions on eBay are time-sensitive, which means that there must be a buyer for your textbook in order for the sale to be successful. If you are planning on selling the books you used during the autumn semester, the best time to put them for sale is typically one week prior to the beginning of the spring semester. This will provide you with the highest possible return on your textbook investment. If you are selling the books you used in the spring semester, you should wait and list them right before the start of the fall semester. The exception to this rule is if you know that your former class will be offered in the summer; in this case, the rule that states you should list them one week prior is a good rule to follow.
You can also use eBay and other online auction sites by just opening a business on eBay. This is the alternative method. The benefit of using this method is that it enables you to list your books in a format that is never-ending; however, the drawback is that you are required to pay a monthly fee for your “store,” and you also face competition from other sellers who list the same book as you do, if there are any such sellers. You can sell your books on eBay or through one of the other online businesses that offer a comparable service, but these other online stores do not charge you monthly “store” fees. You have the possibility to place your book for sale on websites like Craigslist and Amazon in the form of a listing, in which you ask for a predetermined price for the book. The disadvantage is that other individuals will frequently “undercut” you by selling their book at a lower price than you do. Therefore, if you want to get a decent deal on your textbook, you will either need to be patient or reduce the price that you are asking for your textbook.
The final method for getting more money for your textbooks that I will go through here is the use of an exchange service for textbooks. The practice of trading textbooks is still quite novel on the majority of college campuses, and it has not yet achieved widespread acceptance. These provide college students with the best possible option, as many of them permit students to sell their textbooks to other students or to swap a textbook for a book that will be required for the subsequent semester in which they will be enrolled. BookDefy is an excellent website, and it enables users to perform both of these things.
Why do these websites provide you a “best-case scenario” option to choose from? The answer to that question is quite straightforward: many teachers insist that students use textbooks that undergo only minimal amounts of revision (consider English texts, MLA handbooks, math and chemistry). The vast majority of these subjects have scant few, if any, other topics or debates to choose from. Now, publishers will frequently alter minor details in an effort to persuade students to purchase a “new” edition of a book, despite the fact that the content of previous editions will remain the same. Students that take advantage of these exchange services actually have the opportunity to trade in an older version of the textbook for a copy of the book that another student requires. Both students have undoubtedly already spent a significant amount of money on their respective textbooks; but, if they use a website such as BookDefy to find each other and trade books, neither student will need to spend any additional money on books. If you are unable to locate another student with whom you can swap textbooks, other students may purchase your textbook; alternatively, you may purchase theirs without having to worry about the costs of shipping and handling, as you would likely have to do when purchasing items from eBay, Amazon, or other online retailers.
To summarize, just because the local bookstores will not pay you a fair price for your used textbooks does not indicate that you should consider selling them back to them. These are only a couple of the many methods in which you can convert older, less “useful” books into cold, hard cash; however, there are many other ways in which you can do this.
