What's the best way to sell back (used) college textbooks?

December 19, 2005 12:23 PM

What's the best way to sell back (used) college textbooks?

My university bookstore has an end-of-the-semester book buy-back program, but they will offer decent money for books being used only in the coming semester. After recently trying to sell a whole slew of books, and with most of them getting < $2/book, there must be a better way. b>What's my best option for getting the most $$ back for my used books? eBay? Amazon? Are there any new "web 2.0" text-book services out there?

On a related note, if someone was to build a new textbook buyback service (probably: web-based, university specific), what features should it have? How should it be structured? Something very loose, like a wiki, that allows people to just post the books they have to offer, or something more structured?

posted by chefscotticus to education (12 comments total)

I always did pretty well with Half.com.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:28 PM on December 19, 2005 [1 favorite]

I second half.com.
posted by crapples at 12:31 PM on December 19, 2005

I sold one on amazon, but there fees are crazy high in my opinion. I ended up getting about half of what I paid for it, so I guess it wasn't too bad.
posted by meta87 at 12:35 PM on December 19, 2005

On a related note, if someone was to build a new textbook buyback service (probably: web-based, university specific), what features should it have? How should it be structured?

Someone setup a site like that when I was in collage, it was basically like a cragslist for Iowa State students. It was called cheggpost but it looks like they tried to turn it into a real company or something (weak).

If you sell directly to other students you'll get the best deal.
posted by delmoi at 12:36 PM on December 19, 2005

Our school has a service called IlliniBookExchange started by a friend ofmine. It's the main venue for used textbooks outside of bookstores. http://illinibookexchange.com/

We also have newsgroups where people often sell textbooks among other things.
posted by lpctstr; at 12:36 PM on December 19, 2005

Some universities have a campus group (like a volunteer group or greek) who organizes a buy back but instead of selling all your books to them you are able to sell it directly to a person, that way they get a cheaper book for a class next semester and you get more money back. It totally cuts out the bookstore and somehow the group gets a fraction of the money exchanged.
posted by TheLibrarian at 12:38 PM on December 19, 2005

Half.com is awesome. Just make sure to have some padded mailers of various sizes on hand so you can just drop the books in one and run down to the post office when you make a sale.
posted by amber_dale at 12:48 PM on December 19, 2005

if you set it up to get paid via pay pal you can print labels from there via the usps and then you don't have to go to the Post Office at all. (in fact you don't even have to enter your shipping or theirs just choose your shipping options, print the label and that is it.
posted by TheLibrarian at 12:51 PM on December 19, 2005

It was called cheggpost but it looks like they tried to turn it into a real company or something (weak).

Actually, I think it was just expanded to cross several schools. The founder, Josh, only recently has had his eye on making actual cash from the venture (or so he told me in a conversation last week). It looks like you have to register to get into the site, but I would imagine it's just to provide a location to determine your school.

My selling process was always to check what the buy-back price and used prices were for the book and sell it for halfway in-between -- usually closer to the buy-back price. Friends first, then posting on either bulletin boards or local sites like chegg or such. Any books that weren't being used the next semester are a good choice for half.com since there's likely some other school that's still using it...
posted by mikeh at 12:59 PM on December 19, 2005

looks like they tried to turn it into a real company or something (weak).

Funny how this seems to have happened at the same time out here. MIT had mit411.com, which lapsed, this year several sprouted including campusbeacon.com, mit412.com, and some others.

TheLibrarian's suggestion of student-run buybacks is great. Here it is run by Alpha Phi Omega, a national community service organization (it's not actually a "frat").
posted by whatzit at 2:03 PM on December 19, 2005

It's worth looking at dogears.net, if you're going to one of the schools listed -- this site organizes person-to-person deals (like TheLibrarian suggested).
posted by provolot at 2:13 PM on December 19, 2005

If facebook starts doing this, they will become even more ubiquitous than they are already.

Does your school have an LJ community? Mine does, and everyone sells/trades books through there. Because it's direct to other students, it's not as much of a loss, but because it's through LJ, you don't have to do it through a network of friends.
posted by booksandlibretti at 4:02 PM on December 19, 2005