Warning: Be Careful Where You Sell Your Books!

home_photo_books.jpgI’m not gonna lie – I love buying textbooks.  Yes, they are expensive and, yes, they are heavy and annoying to carry around.  But after enrolling for your classes and getting your book lists, there’s something about buying brand new books full of things you don’t know (I may or may not pretend to be Hermione Granger when I go textbook shopping…) that is just sort of…exciting.

Usually, this magical feeling fades after about two weeks of lectures, homework, and quizzes.  Then they are just regular books, collecting dust on my dorm room floor.  That is, until the semester ends and it’s time to try and get some of your cash back (because, let’s face it, you’re broke after spending your weekends at the bar instead of actually reading those books).

There are tons of places to sell back your books.  You could go to the campus bookstore (and get ripped off), the slightly off-campus bookstore (and get ripped off), sell them in your dorm, or use the hundreds of sites on the internet that offer great prices and relatively little hassle (too good to be true?).  I usually use the internet, unless I’m really in need of cash NOW.  To this point, I haven’t had an issue with selling my books back online, but I have always been a bit wary.

What if the website is lying and I never get my check?  What it something happens with the mail and my books disappear?

Turns out, maybe my fears weren’t so baseless.  One of our readers was recently scammed by a website that buys and sells textbooks from studentsTextbookwheel.com offers great prices for books and free shipping, obviously a very enticing offer.  Only, what you get in return is a check that’s about 1/10 of what you were originally offered and a note saying most of your books were lost in the mail (weird how that can happen when you send them in one big box…).  In fact, you’d be lucky to get a check at all.

Places like amazon.com and ebay.com have been proven effective and safe (for the most part) for years.  With new textbook sites popping up every day, it’s hard not to be tempted by their prices, but maybe it’s better to stick with what you know.  Sometimes all those great offers (like the one our reader fell for) are too good to be true. Don’t fall for them.

If you are selling your books, excercise caution – after all, you spent a lot of time and money buying these books, you don’t want to just give them away.  If you did, you could have dumped ‘em at the campus bookstore…or held onto them for a much-needed coffee table.

4 Comments on "Warning: Be Careful Where You Sell Your Books!"

  1. monica says:
    Wed, 8th Jul 20092:00 pm 

    I have found that buying books is kind of a pain in the ass.Instead I rent my books if they are available. There is this really great website chegg.com where you can rent nearly any book. Best of all is they plant a tree for every book that you rent. They give you a due date to return the book by and you get the full amount that you paid to rent it. Plus they pay for the shipping of the book back to them. It is easy to do and they are really good about getting the books to you within 4 days. This was my first experience renting books and I absolutely love it. You guys should check it out rent a book or two and find how wonderful it is to not get ripped off by bookstores.

  2. elaine says:
    Wed, 8th Jul 20095:40 pm 

    some universities have their own student websites that allows you to put an ad up for ur books/iclickers/lab equipment/etc and if someone is interested they email you and u can set up a place and time to meet up on campus to sell it. its beneficial for both parties bc its cheaper than the bookstore and u get more money than what the store is offering to buy back.

    you can also facebook market it :)

  3. Becca says:
    Thu, 9th Jul 20094:56 am 

    textbooks.com has worked for me a ton! I’ve gotten the full amount they offered me every time.

  4. sara says:
    Thu, 9th Jul 20091:14 pm 

    A site I LOVE is BetterWorldBooks.com — all proceeds go to a charity supporting literacy, shipping is free and most of the books are super cheap. This is a great site for if you are assigned novels as well, sometimes they don’t have the actual textbook. I have bought and sold from this site multiple times and been extremely happy. Give it a try!

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