CollegeCandy’s Guide To Selling Those Books

April 24, 2010 3:00 pm     Posted in Cool Stuff, Reality  Jessica- Delaware g+ page


By Jessica

Campus bookstores suck. They convince you that you need to buy a textbook for $150, and you’ll crack it open on that one day you were bored feeling studious, before realizing your exams are straight from the class notes/Powerpoint slides and you don’t even need that 10 pound eyesore in the first place.

No harm done, you’ll just return it, right?

Right, except that you’ll receive a measly $20 (if you’re lucky).

I for one am tired of returning my (barely opened) books for a small fraction of what I paid for them. It’s spring, and I need every extra dollar for what’s really important in college: new bikinis and happy-hour margaritas, duh! So I decided to compile a list of places to do textbook business that are better than the bookstore. Try one of these on for size and then take all that moolah to the bank (or Lulus.com).

1. Bookrenter.com
BookRenter.com is the leading textbook rental site – Its saves college students $1000s of dollars a year on college textbooks. Rent textbooks at bookrenter and get free shipping both ways! Bookrenter also has the largest selection and cheapest books making it the best book rental site out there!

2. Chegg.com
Offers free shipping, buyback at 100% of sale price, and they even plant a tree every time you sell a book (seriously!).

3. Ecampus.com
Sell back your books and you can enter into a sweepstakes to win a new Apple iPad! They also sell books for less than half their original price, so if you don’t win that iPad, you will have plenty of extra money to buy one.

4. Cash4Books.net
Same deal. Cash back, free shipping.

5. TextbooksRUs.com
Rated #1 by CampusGrotto as the best value, lowest price and best buy-back deals! Hollerrrr!

So there you have it, folks – plenty of options to make some serious money back on those barely-used books (unless you count “beer rest” as a use, in which case they were quite helpful) and get a deal on some newish ones for next year. Now you’ll never have to pay full price again and will only have to visit the campus store for cute sweats to wear when you’re hungover!

16 Comments on "CollegeCandy’s Guide To Selling Those Books"

  1. Dani says:
    Sat, 24th Apr 20101:21 pm 

    hah, I have that very same book that girl in the picture has, sitting on my shelf, having not seen the light of day in about 6 months.

  2. criolle johnny says:
    Sat, 24th Apr 20105:57 pm 

    Vile, extortionist, criminal enterprises! Monsters and unspeakable bastards.

    If I had the time, I would copy every textbook to PDF and post it online for free download.

    There is no justification for the price of textbooks. Your college simply wants (more of) your money.

    Their day is coming. As the internet expands, their influence is waning. They deny it, but they fear it. Hopefully, the education revolution will make them the first casualties.

    DAMN, I feel better!

  3. Linda says:
    Sat, 24th Apr 20107:04 pm 

    Gosh, SO agreed, @ criolle johnny.

  4. A.C. says:
    Sat, 24th Apr 20109:11 pm 

    I am the ONLY one of my friends who rents/buys her textbooks from websites, and I am so confused as to why this is! I LOVE Chegg, I've been using them for a few quarters now and they're excellent. I highly suggest skipping your student bookstore and finding a textbook website you work with well.

  5. L says:
    Sun, 25th Apr 20106:28 am 

    Bigwords.com allows you to comparison shop for both buying and selling. Since most places have free buy-back shipping, you might as well go for the highest bidder.

    I've been using it for years, to great effect.

  6. LD says:
    Sun, 25th Apr 20106:32 am 

    I also have that same textbook! I actually read mine until I realized that my prof pretty much copied his lectures word for word out of the book. Anyways I have some strange complex that doesn't allow me to sell my textbooks, so I will be that person who has box upon box filled with (barely used) textbooks when she graduates.

  7. tori says:
    Sun, 25th Apr 201010:33 am 

    actually the college doesn't have much to do with the bookstore on campus.

    usually they operate within themselves. As in the profits from the bookstore go directly back into the bookstore (usually for stock and personnel)

    Bookstores don't control the prices of books. Also most campus bookstores will let you return an unneeded book for FULL price around the beginning of the year.

    They also don't choose what books they sell, thats the professors. So if you want to complain about high prices or unneeded books then complain to the professors not the people at the bookstore. Trust me they don't want to hear it.

    The bookstore that I personally work at, has several raffles for people selling back books. (including ipods, gift certificates, etc.)

    As far as book buyback usually thats through another company too that just comes into your campus bookstore to buy back books.

    And yeah even though I work for the bookstore on my campus, I've bought several of my textbooks from Amazon. And I understand the benefits. But at the same time its nice to support a "local" business even if you do just buy sweatpants there.

  8. Jess says:
    Mon, 26th Apr 20109:58 pm 

    note than amazon won't pay you cash, they give you an amazon.com gift card. and i've used or looked at quotes from all these sites, and yes sometimes they can get you a good buyback price, i don't think they're as good as you're making them out to be. Even on chegg, i don't think you'll get full price.

  9. Jess says:
    Mon, 26th Apr 201010:01 pm 

    Also, if you sell them back to your bookstore at least you know they'll often take them. sometimes the websites only buy back certain editions or won't take your book at all. I think it's always pretty much hit or miss.

  10. Nicole says:
    Sun, 2nd May 20103:39 am 

    I've been selling my books on half.com since high school. (yes, my high school required us to buy all our textbooks…SUCH a waste of money…)

  11. CJ says:
    Fri, 7th May 20106:12 am 

    If you set up a sellers account on amazon, you can sell your book for whatever price you like. I've been able to sell all of my textbooks back and receive full price (sometimes I even made a profit)! Amazon does take a small percentage, but the rest of the money is directly deposited into your bank account.

  12. amidress says:
    Wed, 10th Aug 201111:43 pm 

    cool!

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