Best way to sell used (college) books?

[Coldkilla]

I tried Half Price Books, they were going to give me $9.00 for a good condition $200 book, I put an add up at college on a books for sale tack board and nothing has sold for 6 months...I'm not sure about ebay at the moment and I'm contimplating other places..

If you had, say, 10 college books to sell, where would you best find the place to sell them at a reasonably decent price?

 

[nickbits]

You have to sell them at your school. No one else wants them. Bulletin boards, etc.

 

[sdifox]

err, in the dorm or college paper?

 

[dbk]

half.com, ebay, amazon marketplace.

 

[oiprocs]

I put them on half.com (the ebay sh!t). I usually get a fair return. If the book cost me 80 bucks, I usually sell for 60.

Just be patient though. And if you're book is not the current edition, or some obscure title that only a dick professor would assign, then be REALLY patient.

 

[ViviTheMage]

half.com
amazon.com

 

[Oceandevi]

around here they change editions every year.. so your 600 dollars worth of books are useless..

 

[BoomerD]

I've had good luck with the college bulletin boards and Craigslist.

Originally posted by: Oceandevi
around here they change editions every year.. so your 600 dollars worth of books are useless..

That's something that pisses me off. For the most part, it's un-needed changes in the texts that allow the book companies to do this.

Sure, some subjects have major changes as time goes on, but numbers don't change, so why do we need new math texts every year or 2? Same with MOST subjects...Things that are technological in nature are about the only areas that can justify new textbooks on a frequent basis as technology changes rather frequently nowadays.
History also changes of course...but USUALLY slowly enough that a new text every year isn't warranted.


But hey...remember, it's all about profit...and profit at any cost is good, right?

 

[Farang]

I just used a combo of those online buybacks, one was giving me half price (like $25 for $50 books) and Barnes and Noble picked up the cheaper, more obscure ones for like $5-$15. Got about $100 total, or at least I should in the future.

 

[Saint Nick]

E B A Y

There is ALWAYS a buyer.

 

[frostedflakes]

If it's an old edition, you're probably not going to get much for it.

 

[MrPickins]

I'm lazy, I just sell current edition books back to the campus bookstore.

Old editions either get kept or donated to Goodwill.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: BoomerD
That's something that pisses me off. For the most part, it's un-needed changes in the texts that allow the book companies to do this.

Sure, some subjects have major changes as time goes on, but numbers don't change, so why do we need new math texts every year or 2? Same with MOST subjects...Things that are technological in nature are about the only areas that can justify new textbooks on a frequent basis as technology changes rather frequently nowadays.
History also changes of course...but USUALLY slowly enough that a new text every year isn't warranted.

But hey...remember, it's all about profit...and profit at any cost is good, right?

Yyyyyup. And it frustrates the professors too.
One of my professors mentioned it in class. One of our books went into the 10th edition, so the ones we had suddenly went way down in market value. He paged through and noted a few minor changes. His verdict: "Well that's a waste of money."
And professors who make up lots of their own lesson plans and examples, but reference the text frequently, rather than teaching straight from the text, have to go through everything and check stupid little shit like page and figure numbers. Notes for class, handouts, homework assignments - it all needs to get sifted through.
This particular 10th edition book was in the second edition in 1962. 9th was 2003. 10th was 2007.
Another one of my textbooks went 10 years between the 1st and 2nd editions.

The fun part: My professors say that engineering textbooks and handbooks from the 1940s are some of the best out there. New textbooks seem to get math majors in on some of the fun, and they start dealing with some ugly partial differential equations and such. I'm in the engineering technology program (B.S. degree in MET); we don't really do much with calculus, we use "canned" equations, without all the derivations. Nice algebra equations are a good thing, and a lot of the time, they're quite good enough to get the job done.

The good part: My now-outdated books will hopefully serve me well in the future. The information is still good; most of the changes are things like new homework problems, corrections to minutiae, and a little bit of new content that can be obtained elsewhere.
I've got a pretty good stack of textbooks now.

The bad part: No money from selling books back.
Well, almost. Books for gen-ed classes do get sold back.

The ugly part: Your face.

 

[imported_Imp]

At your school on bulletin boards, online postings or solicitation outside classrooms.

Personally, I gave up on selling my books after third year. The money I got back helped offset the cost of one or two new books, but you may as well keep them for the hell of it.

 

[Sureshot324]

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
I tried Half Price Books, they were going to give me $9.00 for a good condition $200 book, I put an add up at college on a books for sale tack board and nothing has sold for 6 months...I'm not sure about ebay at the moment and I'm contimplating other places..

If you had, say, 10 college books to sell, where would you best find the place to sell them at a reasonably decent price?

You might be asking too much money. When I was selling my books about 5 years ago I just put up ads around campus and I sold some but not all of my books. Whenever a book didn't sell after a while, I'd lower the price and put up new ads.

Like others have said. half.com, amazon, and craigslist are excellent. I would sell them as quick as you can because they depreciate fast. Every semester that goes by means a few new editions come out. If your book is 2 or more editions out of date, good luck selling it.

 

[Mo0o]

Ive always sold my books on amazon.com or ebay, which is where i bought them in the first place

 

[Cheesetogo]

My college book store buys books back at 50% of what they sell them for. I bought all my books on amazon at the beginning of the year, which cost about 75% of the price the bookstore sells them for. I got out pretty good!

 

[BoomerD]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo
My college book store buys books back at 50% of what they sell them for. I bought all my books on amazon at the beginning of the year, which cost about 75% of the price the bookstore sells them for. I got out pretty good!

Our campus requires the original receipt for the annual buy-back, but there's a book company that comes in a week later that will buy books without the receipt...of course, they offer pennies on the dollar.:disgust:

Sadly, the campus buy-back only pays 20-25% of what they re-sell the books for...USED.
It sucks...quite a racket they have going for themselves.

I've had several classes that used small handout type of texts written by the instructors...about $5.00 each, as supplements to the texts, and my architectural graphics and design only had a reproduction from Cal-Poly as it's text...about $5.00. Otherwise, $100-$180 is the norm for USED books, and if the text includes any kind of worthless "add-ons" like CD's from the publisher, add 10-20%.

I bought books for for of my five spring classes this week. One class I already have the text book for, (Bookkeeping 2) but of course, there's the working papers and other crap that are required. $617+. (The Bookkeeping text is $180 by itself)

I still need the book for Management Information Systems (cs202) but I'll get that one from a friend who doesn't need it anymore.