About Michael J. Jung

Michael J. Jung is a professional freelance writer for hire. He loves learning about new side hustles and promoting nonprofit groups. When he's not writing or selling books, you can find him volunteering as Darth Vader or Spider-Man for children's events. Check out his Sell Books Fast eBook series on Amazon!

How to Buy College Textbooks for Less on the Textbooks.com Website

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

Hey college students! Wondering where to buy textbooks for less? The following is an interview I conducted with Chris Gibson, the Director of Contact Center Operations for Textbooks.com for my blog article, How to Sell Books Online for Profit with the Textbooks.com Buyback Program.

Aside from paying cash for books sold online to them, Textbooks.com also sells deeply discounted textbooks for college.

I know college students are always looking to buy textbooks cheap and spare their wallets, so I thought I’d post this interview to let you know how much money you can save by buying (and in some cases selling back) your textbooks from Textbooks.com.

Take it away, Chris!

Textbooks.com not only buys books but also sells them at discounted prices. What books do you sell?

Textbooks.com sells new and used books, eTextbooks, and other course materials for higher education and K-12 courses.

This includes textbooks from thousands of subjects, genres, and majors, along with a large list of trade books, novels, and non-fiction.

Books are also available through the Textbooks.com Marketplace.

What is the Textbooks.com Marketplace?

The Textbooks.com Marketplace, featuring books sold by independent sellers, is an additional service to our customers so they have more options when it comes to buying textbooks. If a title is available via Marketplace, it will be noted on the product page under the “Marketplace” header.

How can a student search your database for a textbook?

The best way to search our database is by ISBN. An ISBN is a 10- or 13-digit code assigned to a book. It’s located on the copyright page inside the book and usually also on the bar code on the back cover, although we recommend using the one on the copyright page.

You can search by title, author, or browse by keyword or subject as well, but searching by ISBN ensures you are buying the correct book assigned for your course.

There can be many versions or editions of a given title; some may be custom editions, some may come with online access, some may be packaged with additional components. Each “version” of a title will have its own ISBN, so it ensures we’re talking about the same book.

You also offer eTextbooks – what type of subjects do you offer?

We offer thousands of eTextbooks in a range of subjects and genres, and they are compatible with laptops, desktops, tablets, and mobile devices (some may require you to download e-reader software).

Students can search eTextbooks via our main page, or the eTextbooks page.

How much are your eTextbooks in comparison to physical textbooks?

eTextbooks can be up to 60% less than their print counterparts.

What are some other benefits of eTextbooks?

eTextbooks and other digital materials can feature interactive learning tools, quick search, highlighting, note-sharing, definition look-up, and more. You can also generally access the contents right after purchase and they make learning on the go very easy.

What kind of discounts can students expect if they buy their textbooks from Textbooks.com?

The price of books available on Textbooks.com is typically much less expensive than traditional campus bookstores and many other online retailers, and up to 90% off of the list price.

When purchasing books from Textbooks.com, we offer free shipping on orders $25 and up, when bought directly from us.

Free shipping offers exclude Textbooks.com Marketplace items. Because Textbooks.com Marketplace sellers are independent vendors who ship their own items, they require a shipping charge.

If students buy books from Textbooks.com, can they also sell these books back to Textbooks.com when the semester ends?

Yes, absolutely! If there is buyback value, they can sell back to us. And
you can sell books to us no matter where you bought them.

And when students are looking to buy books from us, they should know that
we offer Guaranteed Cash Back on thousands of in-demand titles. That means
we’ll pay at least 50% of the purchase price of the book, if it is returned
in good condition during the Guaranteed Cash Back timeframe.

Books are noted as “Guaranteed Cash Back” on the product page under the
“New” or “Used” column, where you will see “Only $____ after buyback!” It’s
also noted in the cart at checkout. Students can also search for Guaranteed
Cash Back books on the “Advanced Search” page.

Thanks for the information, Chris!

I hope this article has informed you of a good website to buy textbooks for less. If you’d like to save money by buying discounted textbooks for college, be sure to visit Textbooks.com and search its database for your next semester’s college textbooks.

As always, if you’d like to receive more tips and tricks for how to buy books for big discounts as well as sell books online for extra money, subscribe to my blog!

Want to ask me a question or offer a suggestion for a future blog article? Email me at sellbooksfastonline@gmail.com.

Should you Sell Textbooks on Amazon or to a Book Buyback Company to Make Money?

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

Whenever I go out shopping for books to sell online, I inevitably get asked the same question by curious people who see me scanning the book barcodes:

“Do you make a lot of money selling these books on Amazon?”

None of these people even consider that I might be selling my books on a website other than Amazon. To them, Amazon is the first, last, and only place anyone can sell books for cash (even eBay is losing popularity as a good place to sell your books online).

Now Amazon is a good place to sell books online for profit – I sell books for as much as $300 regularly on Amazon.com, and a good portion of my extra income comes from my Amazon book sales.

But as the readers of my blog know, Amazon is not the only online book buyer out there. Buyback websites like Textbooks.com, Valore,Powells, and Cash 4 Books (all of which you can find through Bookscouter) can offer many more options for selling books online.

So I’d like to spend some time answering this question:

Which Makes Me More Extra Money — Amazon or a Buyback Website?

Short answer? It depends.

Most people automatically think Amazon is the best place to sell books online for cash. After all, if you list your book on Amazon, you decide what price you want to sell it for – a buyback website will only give you a non-negotiable price quote for your book.

Moreover, Amazon receives thousands of visitors every day, which increases the odds that someone will buy your book for the price you’re asking.

But before you start listing your books for hundreds of dollars on Amazon, you should know about some of the downsides to selling books on Amazon. (Be prepared, we have a lot of information to cover).

First, while you can list your books on Amazon for any price you want (some of my Amazon books are priced over $600), the odds of someone buying your book depend greatly on the prices offered by other people selling the same book on Amazon.

Example: if there are five people selling a book and the person with the lowest price is asking $50 for his book while the person with the highest price is asking $80 for the same book, you stand an excellent chance of selling your copy of the book for $60 (especially if your book is in better condition than the $50 copy).

On the other hand, if those people are selling their copies for $2 or $5, you’ll have a tough time selling your book if you try to sell it for $60.

(That’s not to say you can’t sell a book for a high price when everyone else is selling their copies cheaply – I’ve sold books for $20 on Amazon when other sellers were asking just $4 for the same book – but I had to wait several months for my book to sell).

Things get trickier when selling textbooks online. Textbooks get new editions and are replaced quickly in universities – so while your textbook might be selling for $100 today, that price might drop to $50 next week as other students start selling their college textbooks on Amazon for cheaper prices in a vain attempt to sell their books faster and make money fast.

Booksellers call this technique “low balling” and it can make valuable books worthless in a short time. I’ve listed textbooks for $200 on Amazon.com, only to find twenty other Amazon sellers listing their copies for only $5 a week later!

Worse news: even if your book does sell on Amazon.com for a good price, Amazon takes out a lot of fees and commissions before you get paid. Here’s a breakdown:

Amazon Fees and Commissions

Currently, Amazon offers two selling plans, a Professional Selling plan and an Individual Selling plan.

People who sell on a Professional Selling plan pay a monthly subscription fee of $40, which waives some of the fees Amazon places on book sales.

People who sell on an Individual Selling plan don’t pay monthly fees, but do pay an extra $0.99 “item fee” for every book they sell on Amazon.com, which can add up if you sell a lot of books on Amazon.

Now, I’m going to assume that you’ll have an Individual Selling plan (since you probably just want to make some extra money selling books and/or sell your textbooks for some extra cash). Here’s what Amazon will take out:

First, Amazon will take a 15% commission from the price you’re selling your book for (so if you sell your textbook for $100, Amazon will take $15 lowering your earnings to $85).

Next, Amazon will charge a “variable closing fee” of $1.35. (Your textbook will now earn you only $83.65).

And finally Amazon will take out another $0.99 for its “item fee.” (Your textbook will pay you only $82.66. Not bad, but not as much as you thought you’d get, right?)

Now Amazon.com will give you a shipping credit (which they get from the person who bought your book) to help you buy postage to send your book to your buyer. The amount of this shipping credit can vary if you offer faster shipping – but most likely you’ll get a standard shipping credit of $3.99 per book.

When mailing books, most sellers use a low-cost postage called Media Mail. A 3 lb. Media Mail shipping label currently costs $3.72, so you might save some money if your book package weighs 3 lbs or less

However, if your book weighs more than 3 lbs (like a lot of textbooks) you might have to spend $4.22, $4.72, $5.22, or more on a Media Mail label – meaning you’ll lose more money on shipping.

Beyond that, you might want to buy insurance for your package (especially if you’re selling an expensive book) which will eat up even more of your profits.

All told, when you subtract all those fees and commissions, you may only get $79 or less for your $100 book!

Selling to Buyback Websites

So how do buyback websites like Sell Back Your Book, Valore, Powells, and Textbooks.com compare to Amazon.com?

Well, for starters, buyback companies don’t take any fees and commissions out of their price quotes – what they offer you is what they’ll pay (provided your book is in good condition – please read Is The Book Condition of Your Textbook Good Enough to Make Extra Money?).

Also, all the buyback companies I recommend on my blog (and most that you’ll find on Bookscouter) will let you download a free shipping label that you can print to ship your books. (Many buyback companies offer Media Mail labels, although more and more are offering UPS labels – so be sure you drop off your package at the right UPS store or United States Postal Office).

To use the example above, if a buyback company is offering $75 for your textbook, you might be better off selling it to that buyback website even if you can list it for $100 on Amazon (since we’ve just determined you’ll probably make under $79 for that book once Amazon.com takes out its fees and commissions).

So does this mean buyback websites are the best places to sell your books online?

Not always!

Sometimes, a buyback website’s price quote for a book is so low compared to what you could get if you listed that book on Amazon that it’s worth it to sell the book on Amazon, even if you have to wait weeks or months for someone to buy your book.

In these cases, even after Amazon takes out all their fees and commissions, I’ve found that the book often still earned me twice what the buyback company would have paid me.

However, if there’s a price difference of only a few dollars between what a buyback company is offering for my book versus what I can make for the book on Amazon – or if I just want to make some extra money on a textbook before its price drops on Amazon – I’ll sell the book to a buyback company.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to sell books online to buyback websites or on Amazon.com – but just be aware that even though it might look like you’re not getting as much for your book from a buyback company, you might still come ahead.

Whew! Lots of information to digest, right? But I hope you learned something from this blog article – and if you’d like to learn more about selling books online for extra cash, please take a second to subscribe to my blog and get more valuable tips for earning extra money.

Would you like to learn valuable tips to make your books sell faster and for higher prices on Amazon? Check out my series of Sell Books Fast eBooks that will improve your Amazon sales!

Want to contact me and ask some questions? Email me at sellbooksfastonline@gmail.com. Looking forward to hearing from you!

How to Use the Wired Handheld USB CCD Barcode Scanner Reader to Make Extra Money at Home

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

I’ve got a lot of books in my house (as you can probably guess). And when my book collection gets too big, I have to get rid of some of them.

But for me, this isn’t a chore – it’s another chance for me to make some extra money fast by selling used books for cash!

All I need to do is access my free Bookscouter account and compare the prices of my books with my Wired Handheld USB CCD Barcode Scanner Reader.

The Wired Handheld USB CCD Barcode Scanner Reader

Those of you who read How to Make More Money Selling Books Online with the Socket Mobile Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner know I recommend buying the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner if you go to a lot of thrift stores looking for books to re-sell online.

This wireless scanner is an excellent way to quickly scan barcodes and look up resale book prices on your tablet or phone – allowing you to search more thrift stores in less time (and make more extra money selling books). I’ve personally seen my extra income go up to over $1000 a month since I started using this scanner.

Unfortunately a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner can be an expensive investment (most sell for over $200), which is why I’m happy to recommend a less pricey scanner that can also help you sell books at home for cash.

The Wired Handheld USB CCD Barcode Scanner Reader is an inexpensive scanner (most sell for under $30) with a USB cord that plugs into the USB port of your laptop or computer.

On the downside, this scanner doesn’t connect wirelessly to your phone or tablet like the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, making it impractical to take to thrift stores (it’s also twice the size of the sleeker Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner).

On the plus side, however, the Barcode Scanner Reader can read barcodes incredibly fast and enters them into your computer instantly; making it a huge time saver when you sell books for cash and home and need to compare prices with Bookscouter.

Using the Wired Handheld USB CCD Barcode Scanner Reader with Bookscouter

Here’s how I use my Barcode Scanner Reader with Bookscouter to make extra money at home:

1. Place all the books you want to look up in a stack on your desk next to your computer

2. Plug the Barcode Scanner Reader’s USB cord into your computer or laptop’s USB port.

3. Go to Bookscouter.com and enter your free Bookscouter account.

4. Open a blank Microsoft Word document on your computer. Type in the names of buyback websites you want to sell your books to (for instance, I sell a lot of books to Textbooks.com, Powells, Sell Back Your Book, Cash4Books, Valore, and Chegg, so I make sure to list these companies). Write each name on a separate line in the document, leaving several spaces between each name.

5. Now click Bookscouter’s search bar and start scanning the barcodes on your books with your Barcode Scanner Reader.

6. Bookscouter will automatically look up all the buyback price quotes from the websites in its database, allowing you to compare prices for your books and select the best company to sell your books to.

7. Once you find the best place to sell your book online, scan the book’s ISBN number again – this time on your Microsoft Word document under the name of the buyback website (i.e Textbooks.com, Sell Back Your Book etc.) that you want to sell the book to.

8. Place the books you want to sell in different piles (each pile for a different buyback website).

9. Once you’ve finished scanning all of your books, you should have several lists of ISBN numbers on your Microsoft Word document, each list under a different buyback website name.

10. Now it’s a simple matter to just visit each of those buyback websites; copy and paste your list of ISBNs into their search bars; and sell the books in bulk to the website.

11. Finally, print your shipping label and free packing slip for each buyback order and place them on the pile of books you want to sell (be careful to put the right labels with the right orders!). Pack those books, ship them, and wait to be paid!

Since I started using the Barcode Scanner Reader, I’ve been able to scan dozens of books in minutes, allowing me to easily sell hundreds of books every month. For the low price, you really can’t ask for more!

I also want to add that I’ve been using the same Barcode Scanner Reader for the last six years, which says a lot for its durability.

I hope this product review shows you how to use a Barcode Scanner Reader to sell books online for profit. As always, please remember to subscribe to my blog to receive more tips on selling books online, and feel free to comment!

The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 2

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

This is the latest in a series of articles that review the buyback websites you can use to sell your textbooks for the most cash.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read my article Is the Book Condition of Your Textbook Good Enough to Make You Extra Money? to make sure you sell the right kind of textbooks before going any farther. Then come back here (don’t worry, I’ll wait!)

Welcome back! Now let’s get see how you can use what you’ve learned to make some extra money:

Valore

Valore is yet another textbook buyback company I’ve had a lot of success selling to. Many of my textbook buyback packages to them have been worth well over $50!

Valore currently has a minimum buyback order of $15, although once again, since their high textbook buyback price usually keeps this from being a problem.

One cool thing about selling books online to Valore is that it frequently offers bonuses at different times of the year which you can learn about by signing up for email alerts when creating your Valore account. These bonuses come in the form of codes you enter when selling your books, and can give you a 5%, 10% or higher bonus on your buyback order.

Textbooks.com

Finally, Textbooks.com has and always will be one of my favorite book buyback company to sell textbooks to.

While Textbooks.com’s textbook buyback prices don’t always go as high as some of the companies listed above, they do often offer a higher price for most books than other buyback companies.

More importantly, Textbooks.com buys a lot of books (last month alone, they bought over 300 books from me). This, combined with their fast PayPal payment (they usually pay in about 2 weeks), makes them a very good buyback company to sell to.

Textbooks.com offers free UPS shipping labels and has a minimum buyback order of $10 (which is seriously not a problem when you regularly sell them packages worth over $60).

Other Places to Sell College Textbooks

Of course, book buyback websites aren’t the only place where you can sell textbooks online for good prices – and in my next blog entry, I’ll share my thoughts on the question, Should You Sell Textbooks on Amazon or to a Book Buyback Company?

And if you’d like to learn more about great places to sell textbook online, check out The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 1

Stay tuned! And be sure to subscribe and comment!

The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 1

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

This is part of a series of blog posts that will go over various book subjects and/or genres and let you know which buyback companies will offer you good prices for them if you sell them online.

Once again, please note that before selling your books online to a buyback company, you should always check the company’s policies on the condition your books must be in to make sure they will accept your books and pay you the promised price quote.

Selling Textbooks Online

Ah, textbooks! Stories abound about how you can resell your old college textbooks online for a nice profit. Other stories claim that if you want to make more extra money, you can buy textbooks for a few dollars at a thrift store and sell them for over a hundred dollars online.

Guess what? The stories are true.

I should know. Just last week, I picked up two textbooks at a local thrift store for $3 and sold them for $160 to the buyback website Chegg less than five hours after I bought them.

However (and you knew there was going to be a however, didn’t you?) there are a few things about selling textbooks online that you should know before you try out this lucrative way of making extra money online.

I highly recommend you read my article Is the Book Condition of your Textbook Good Enough to Make Extra Money? to make sure you sell the right kind of textbooks before going any farther.

Did that? All right! Now let’s get to some of the fun stuff:

Two of the Best Textbook Buyback Websites

When it comes to selling textbooks online, there are a few book buyback companies I strongly recommend. These are all buyback companies I’ve worked with personally who have offered me great price quotes for my textbooks, have honored their price quotes, and paid me quickly:

Chegg

Chegg is an online learning platform that offers textbook buyback services. You can also buy or rent books here and even find online tutors.

When it comes to selling books online to Chegg, there appears to be no minimum buyback order (I’ve been paid for packages that were worth as little as $4.00). However, Chegg will only buy 20 books from you every 21 days. If you try to sell any more books after you’ve reached this limit, Chegg will not accept your order until enough time has passed.

This is something I keep in mind when selling books for $5 or $8 to Chegg – while these prices might be great in comparison to what other buyback companies are offering, I don’t want to sell too many books to them at once in case I find something really valuable I want to sell (like I did last week!)

I’m happy to report that Chegg is now offering to pay via PayPal and pays extremely fast (my last payment came just a little over a week after I sent my books to them).

As with most textbook buyback websites, Chegg offers free shipping and allows you to print UPS labels that you can send through any store that accepts UPS packages.

TextbookRush

TextbookRush is another buyback website that frequently offers to buy textbooks for high prices (I’ve sold textbook packages online to them for $40 or even $50).

To get a buyback price quote, just visit TextbookRush and enter the ISBN number of your book in their search bar. You’ll get a price quote and can immediately decide whether you want to sell to this company or not.

If you sell books to TextbookRush, you can print free FedEx shipping labels to ship your books. TextbooksRush also requires a minimum buyback order of $15, which generally isn’t a problem when selling textbooks since the price quotes are usually high.

More Good Textbook Buyback Websites

Originally, I intended to list all the best textbook buyback websites I’ve worked with in one blog post – until I realized there were just too many to fit in a single article!

If you’d like to learn about more of the best textbook buyback websites (and I suspect you do!) stay tuned for the next part of this article, The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 2.

And, as always, don’t forget to subscribe and comment!

Is the Book Condition of Your Textbook Good Enough to Make Extra Money?

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

What’s the first thing you should do when your Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner and tablet/cell phone tell you the book you just found is worth a lot of money?

If you answered, “Jump up and down and squeal like a little girl” – sorry, but you’re wrong (and seriously, what’s wrong with you? That kind of behavior can get you thrown out of the store! Well, unless you are a little girl…).

No, what you want to do is check to see if the book condition of the textbook or popular fiction book you found is good enough to sell online to buyback websites (or Amazon).

Here’s the deal – while you can find valuable books for cheap prices at thrift stores and garage sales, a lot of these books have been treated pretty badly. Pages get marked up and/or torn out, bindings get broken, and water damage can make turning pages a nightmare.

And if you make the mistake of sending these books to a buyback website to make extra money? Sorry, but you’ll usually end up losing money – sometimes a lot.

To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, here are four common problems with book condition that should make you think twice before you try and sell them online for cash.

Water Damage

Ugh! These are the most common defects in used books. Sometimes the previous owner spilled a drink in his or her book, making the pages stain, stick and/or warp.

Obviously these books will be rejected by all buyback websites – the problem is sometimes it’s not easy to spot water damage at first glance.

Get in the habit of flipping through a book’s pages before you put it in your cart to buy. If you notice any warped, wrinkled, or discolored pages – put it back!

Broken Binding

Books with deep wrinkles running down its spine may have a broken spine where the pages are starting to separate from the cover.

Sometimes, broken binding is hard to spot (especially in hardback books) since the cover might look fine and hide any internal damage. Naturally, buyback websites won’t buy these books.

The same test you use for water damage can help here – books with broken bindings usually reveal their weak spots when you flip through the pages.

Marked Up or Missing Pages

Textbooks and workbooks can fetch a high price on buyback websites – especially if they’re recent editions.

But before you throw that book in your cart, check to see if the book has any quiz questions or fill-in-the-blank pages.

If you spot any writing, circling, or filled-in multiple choice slots, put the book back! Likewise, if you find any pages missing, put the book back! Buyback websites will not buy those books for cash!

Books that have a little highlighting, underlining, or even notes in the margins are a unique case. As long as the book only has a few markings (usually on less than 25% of its pages) and the text is easy to read, some buyback websites – including Textbooks.com, Cash 4 Books, Chegg, TextbookRush, and Valore – will buy these books.

But be careful! Study the book condition guidelines provided by these buyback websites before you send them anything, and be careful not to send them anything that might make it difficult to resell (like filled in quiz questions)

Missing Supplemental Materials

These days when you buy a book, you’re not always just buying a book – you’re buying a multimedia experience thanks to the CDs, DVDs, computer codes, and/or CD-ROMs that come with the book.

Make sure all these supplemental materials are in the book – buyback websites will not pay for a book that doesn’t have all its extra materials. Does the cover advertise a CD? Check the inside covers to make sure it’s in its plastic sleeve (and free of scratches).

Have the computer codes in the book been torn out or opened? Then you probably can’t sell the books for cash to a buyback website.

Other Problems with Book Condition

If you make sure to check for the four common book condition defects listed above, you should be able to make significantly more extra money selling books online.

That said, there are still other qualities that you should keep in mind when assessing book condition that will affect whether or not you can sell the book online for cash.

If you buy a lot of books at library sales, for instance, you should find out first if the buyback website you want to sell the book to accepts ex-library books (some buyback websites pay a lot of money for ex-library books, others will reject them, and still others will only pay half their quoted buyback price for them).

Because of this, it’s always a good idea to review each buyback website’s policies on book condition before sending your books to them for cash. Trust me – you’ll make more money this way and save yourself a lot of frustration.

Once you know your textbooks and/or other books are in acceptable condition for the buyback website you want to sell to, it’s time to cash in! Find out where you can sell your books for the most money in Best Books to Sell Online to Buyback Companies and The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 1.

And – as always – remember to subscribe to my blog to receive updates on more tools and tricks to make more money selling books for cash online!

How to Find the Best Books to Sell on Bookscouter with a Free Bookscouter Account

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

How would you like to know how much more than forty online buyback companies (including Amazon.com) will pay for a book – before you buy that book to resell?

Sounds cool, right? And the best part is that all of this information is available freely on the Bookscouter website once you sign up for a free online account.

In my article, How to Sell Your Gold Dust Books Online for the Best Prices, I showed you step-by-step how to create a free online account on Bookscouter. In this article, I’d like to describe the online tools a free Bookscouter account gives you, and how you can use these tools to make more extra money by selling books online.

What a Free Bookscouter Account Offers You

As many readers of my blog already know, Bookscouter is a free website that helps you find the best buyback textbook websites (such as Textbooks.com, Powells, and Sell Back Your Book) to sell your books for cash.

By entering your book’s ISBN number (which can usually be found above your book’s barcode or on the book’s publication information page) into Bookscouter’s search bar, Bookscouter will bring up multiple price quotes for that book offered by several buyback textbook sites who want to buy books for cash or trade credit.

By comparing prices, you can decide which website offers the best buyback price for your textbook (or any other book you want to sell) and then go to that buyback company’s website to sell your book online for cash (or, in some cases, trade credit).

This is an invaluable resource not only for college students trying to sell textbooks online, but also anyone who likes to buy books for cheap prices and then sell the used books for cash online.

What new visitors to Bookscouter may not be aware of, however, is that by signing up for a free Bookscouter account, they can get more price quotes from more buyback companies, giving them more options for finding the best places to sell books online besides Amazon.

Without a Bookscouter account, you’ll only get price quotes from 19 buyback companies (Bookscouter’s “Preferred Vendors”).

With a Bookscouter account, however, you’ll receive full access to all 44 of the buyback companies on Bookscouter (and possibly more since Bookscouter is constantly adding new companies to its price comparison search).

This opens up a whole new range of online markets you can sell your books to – markets you might never have known about if you didn’t sign up for the Bookscouter account.

Selecting the Best Places to Sell Books Online

A word of caution – while Bookscouter’s “Preferred Vendors” are generally reliable companies that honor their price quotes and pay you quickly, some of the newer companies that appear on your Bookscouter account aren’t always as reliable. I’ve had a few bad experiences where I sold books to new buyback companies and was paid very slowly, or even not at all.

Fortunately, Bookscouter offers additional free resources to help you sort out the good companies from the mediocre ones.

For starters, you’ll want to visit Bookscouter’s review section where people who sold to different buyback companies can rate their experiences and leave brief reviews. Take the time to read through these reviews – they might save you a lot of trouble.

(And if you do have an unfortunate experience with a buyback company, take the time to write a review of your own and share your experience).

As you continue to use Bookscouter to find books to sell for cash online, you’ll find that there are some buyback websites you want to focus on and others that don’t seem to offer any price quotes for books you find at your local thrift shops.

When this happens, just access your online account and go to you’re My Account page and click on the “Filter Vendors” option. From here, you can select which buyback companies you want to see in your price comparison searches, and focus on only the ones that want your books and pay well for them.

Finding the Best Books to Sell on Amazon and Bookscouter

One additional feature I’ve found useful on my Bookscouter account is that when you look up books through your account, you can see the lowest price listed for the book on Amazon as well as its Sales Rank (which indicates how popular the book is and can help you determine how fast it might sell).

The information isn’t as detailed as the readings you would get by using a bookscouting service like A Seller Tool or even Scout Pal – but it’s still a nice heads up to know that you can get more money for your book by selling it on Amazon instead of Bookscouter.

Be warned, however, sometimes the lowest Amazon price shown on Bookscouter isn’t always 100% accurate. Prices for new and used books on Amazon change rapidly and occasionally the Amazon price shown on Bookscouter isn’t the price the book is currently selling for.

To make sure I buy the right book, I click on the “View on Amazon” link and go directly to the Amazon website to confirm the price I can sell the book for. It takes a few extra seconds – but it’s worth it, if the book is selling for $100 on Amazon and only $50 at buyback companies.

I hope you enjoyed this review of Bookscouter and that it showed you how signing up for a free Bookscouter account can help you make more extra money by selling books online. Please feel free to comment below and, as always, please subscribe to my blog for more tips on making extra money by selling books online quickly!

What Are the Best Books to Sell Online to Book Buyback Companies?

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

This is the first in a series of blog posts that will go over various book subjects and/or genres and let you know which buyback companies will offer you good prices for them if you sell them online.

Please note that before selling your books online to a buyback company, you should always check the company’s policies on the condition your books must be in to make sure they will accept your books and pay you the promised price quote. Remember – some buyback companies will pay handsomely for a book with highlighting and notes, while others will reject them flat out. Make sure you know the company polices!

With that said, here are my thoughts on how much extra money you can earn for bestsellers and graphic novels.

Bestsellers

These type of books (which can include top selling thrillers and literary fiction) are a mixed bag that can range from highly desirable to completely worthless.

The reason for this lies in the nature of bestsellers – because they’re so popular, publishers print a lot of copies (millions of copies if you’re a hot author like Stephen King).

On one hand, this is great since these books are easy to find in thrift stores a few months after their initial release. If the hype for these books is still high, you can expect to earn a nice profit on such books (I’ve personally bought recent bestsellers for $1 and sold them for $8 a few hours later).

On the other hand, this large supply leads to rapid depreciation once demand for these books cools and stores are left with thousands of books very few people want.

When selling to buyback companies though, this depreciation can slow somewhat since some buybacks can still reach interested readers. Most buybacks won’t offer you a ton of money for outdated bestsellers ($2 to $5 a book is fairly typical), but they will often offer more than you can get by selling them on Amazon.com.

(Plus, since most bestsellers continue to depreciate over time, it’s to your advantage to sell them fast – which usually means selling to a buyback company.)

When selling bestsellers, I recommend you sell to Powells Books (if the book is in excellent shape) as they buy more popular fiction than any other buyback company I’ve dealt with. There’s an excellent chance Powells will offer you a nice quote for the stack of bestsellers you just finished reading (especially if they’re still recent releases) so feel free to visit their website, enter the ISBNs of your books, and see what they’re offering.

Another buyback company I recommend for selling bestsellers to is Sell Back Your Book. This company also requests that the books you send them be in very good condition, but I’ve rarely had them reject any of the books I’ve sent them (Powells, on the other hand, has been known to deny me payment on a few books they deem below their book condition standards) so I send them several packages of books every month.

Graphic Novels

Graphic novels run a pretty wide gamut these days. Aside from the collections of superhero comic books that most people think of, you have collections of popular newspaper comic strips, English translations of Japanese manga comics, comic book adaptations of popular novels, and completely original works.

When selling graphic novels, it helps if you know something about the books you’re selling online. If you like reading comic books and/or are a fan of Japanese manga, you probably have an idea of which books are popular and which have a small fan base.

If you’re not already well-versed in graphic novels, I still recommend you take the time to quickly scan the ISBN barcodes of these books (preferably with your Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner) if you find a bunch of them at a thrift store for a low price.

Over time, you’ll learn to separate the high selling graphic novels from the less valuable ones – and know which graphic novel characters are popular (even if you don’t read their stories yourself!)

So how much can you earn from selling graphic novels online to buyback companies? I’ve found some superhero graphic novels can sell for as much as $15, while popular manga comics can go as high as $20!

(That said, I’ve noticed manga tends to be less popular than superhero comics overall, so everything else being equal – I tend to favor superhero graphic novels).

Once again, I recommend checking out Powells Books and Sell Back Your Book as they both enjoy buying popular fiction. (If you have some graphic novels you want to get rid of, you can even check their prices right now from your computer by visiting these websites).

I also recommend you check out Cash 4 Books as they’ve occasionally offered me the best price on a graphic novel (plus they usually pay really fast).

I hope this helps you in your search for more profitable books to sell online! Feel free to comment, and if you’d like to be informed of more blog entries in this series, please subscribe to my blog. We’ll be covering a lot more popular book subjects over the next few weeks (as well as subjects and genres that don’t sell well to buybacks) so stay tuned!

How to Make More Money Selling Books Online with the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

One of the best things about selling books online to make extra money is that you probably already have the basic equipment needed to find and sell books. If you’re just starting out, a cell phone (or tablet) with a good data plan, a computer with Internet access, and a printer are all you need to begin making extra money by selling books online.

That said, there’s a big difference between making a little extra money and making a regular stream of income that you can rely on month in and month out. After all, there are a lot of books at thrift stores, garage sales, and library bookstores that you can resell – and if you can only check a few of these places every day, you’re missing out on a lot of potential profit.

If you’re serious about making money selling books online, you need to upgrade your equipment – and one of the best investments I can recommend is for you to purchase a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner.

Using this one piece of equipment, I’ve seen my online book sales increase from $200 a month to over $1000 – thanks to the greater number of books the scanner allows me to check for resale value.

What is the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner?

The Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner is a lightweight, portable handheld barcode scanner that can read barcodes with the touch of a button. The scanner then sends this information via Bluetooth to any device you link it to, including cell phones and tablets.

Using the scanner, you can quickly and easily send the ISBN numbers on barcodes to the Bookscouter website on your cell or tablet, letting you see if any buyback companies are offering any price quotes on your book.

Since this entire process only takes a couple seconds, a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner offers a much faster way of looking up book prices than typing in the ISBN number by hand or even using your cell phone’s camera to read the barcode.

Making Extra Money with the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner

Using the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, I’ve checked buyback price quotes on over two hundred books in the same amount of time it used to take me to examine less than fifty. Because the scanner saves me so much time and energy, I can now visit more thrift shops and library sales every day, find more profitable books to resell online, and increase my daily earnings.

How much extra money does this translate into? Well, in 2010 when I was still selling books online without the scanner, I was making less than $200 a month re-selling books online to buyback companies. In 2013, when I started using the scanner on a regular basis, that number rose to an average of $700 a month.

This year (2015), that number has jumped to a monthly average of over $1000, thanks largely to all the extra stores I was able to visit using the time saved by the scanner.

Keep in mind that these are only profits I make from selling books online to buyback companies – and do not include any additional profits I make by selling some of the books I find on Amazon.com.

I think you’ll agree that purchasing the Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner is a great investment that will more than pay for itself – if you’re serious about investing the time and effort using it to look for books to sell online.

Cons of a Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner

In general, I’ve been very happy with my Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner, and the way it’s helped me sell more books online.

However, there are a couple things that have annoyed me about the scanner, and I think it’s only fair that I inform you about them in this review.

When I linked the scanner to my Android cell phone, I found that while the scanner normally connected itself to my phone automatically, there were times when I had to go into my cell’s scanner software and link scanner and phone manually. Only took a few seconds, but it was annoying.

I’ve since linked the scanner to my tablet and haven’t had that problem again so far.

I also found out that after a couple years, the scanner’s rechargeable NiMH batteries degraded a bit, and the scanner frequently disconnected from my phone (only to reconnect automatically a few seconds later). Replacing the NiMH batteries solved this problem, so I recommend that you purchase a couple extra rechargeable NiMH AAA batteries when this happens to you. (Just make sure they’re NiMH – the scanner won’t take anything else).

Note: Since publishing this review, I’ve had the chance to review the SP2100 Laser Barcode Scanner which offers additional benefits for selling books online. Feel free to read my review of this scanner at Making Selling Books Online Easier with the SP2100 Laser Barcode Scanner.

I hope you enjoyed this review and that it showed you more ways to make extra money by selling books online. Please feel free to comment below and, as always, please subscribe to my blog for more tips on making extra money by selling books online quickly!

Websites Like Bookscouter

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Michael J. Jung

As many of you have probably noticed, I promote Bookscouter a lot in my blog. There’s a reason for this – Bookscouter is hands down, the best buyback company comparison website I’ve ever seen. No other website (that I know about) compares as many buyback company price quotes (up to 57 buyback vendors as of now!) as Bookscouter.

Even better, if you sign up for a free account with Bookscouter, you can choose which buyback company price quotes show up on your searches – and also get real time price quotes from Amazon.com as well. Pretty cool for a free website!

That said, there are other websites and free apps like Bookscouter that also showcase prices from buyback companies, and I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with them and become prepared to use them when you go out looking for books to sell online.

Why? Well, for one thing, while Bookscouter is normally reliable, it does experience an occasional glitch from time to time. Once while I was searching for books to sell online, I was thrilled to see that one (and only one) buyback company was offering over $40 for a book I just scanned. My elation turned to confusion, however, when I saw Bookscouter telling me that the same buyback company was offering $40 for every book I scanned.

A quick check at the actual buyback company’s website confirmed it – there was an error in the price check and the company wasn’t offering anything for the books I had scanned. I quickly returned the books I scanned to their shelves – but I would have wasted a lot of money if I’d bought them.

On other (rare) occasions, Bookscouter can temporarily shut down due to some maintenance issue. These issues usually resolve themselves in a few hours, but it can be frustrating if you’re out bookscouting and can’t use the website to compare buyback company prices.

When these problems come up, it’s to your advantage to have some backup websites and apps ready to turn to so you can at least find a few books to sell to buyback companies until Bookscouter resolves its issues.

Here are some “back up” websites and apps that I suggest you study up on:

Bookfinder

Bookfinder is an ecommerce search engine that helps people find books they want at good prices. More importantly for you, however, it has a feature on its website that compares buyback price quotes.

Bookfinder doesn’t compare anywhere near the number of buyback companies Bookscouter does (as of now it only compares seven – Textbooks.com, TextbookRush, Abe Books, Amazon.com, eCampus.com, Bookbyte, and Valore) but it does allow for some comparison buyback shopping if you’re in a pinch.

One cool feature about this website is that you can enter multiple ISBNs from the books you’re checking and then have the website show prices for all the books simultaneously (as opposed to looking them up one by one).

Overall, I prefer Bookscouter to Bookfinder – but I’m glad I can turn to Bookfinder if I need to.

Sell Back Your Book App

This is a free app for your Android or iPhone that you can download off of the Sell Back Your Books website.

Sell Back Your Books is one of my favorite buyback companies to sell to. They offer competitive prices and only have a $5 minimum buyback order (meaning they need to offer you a price quote of at least $5 for all of your books before you can finalize your buyback order and send out your books).

The downside to this app is – you guessed it – it only gives you price quotes from Sell Back Your Books and not any other buyback companies.

Nevertheless, Sell Back Your Books does offer good price quotes for a lot of books (I recently made almost $50 just by selling them six books – check them out to see if you can sell any of your books to them!) and you should definitely download their app in case of an emergency.

Cash 4 Books App

This is another free Android and iPhone app offered by another buyback company I sell to on a regular basis – Cash 4 Books. Like Sell Back Your Books, Cash 4 Books has a minimum buyback order of $5, and their buyback prices are usually so high that it’s very easy to sell books to them (I frequently sell buyback packages to them in excess of $25).

To top it off, Cash 4 Books frequently emails special bonus codes to people who open a free account with them that increases their already substantial price quotes.

Again, the downside to this app is that it only offers price quotes from Cash 4 Books. Even so this is a good buyback company that will offer good prices for any books you choose to sell to them, so the app is definitely worth downloading. (You can find it on Cash 4 Books main page under “Quick Links” “Mobile Apps with Barcode Scanner”).

Buyback Company Websites

If you don’t want to download apps and prefer looking up prices online, you can always go directly to a buyback company’s website and look up price quotes if the Bookscouter website is down and/or experiencing a glitch.

The only issue with this method is that it’s too time consuming to check a bunch of different websites against a single book. You could be scanning for hours and only find a small number of books you can sell online to buyback companies.

To combat this problem, you’ll want to limit your search to buyback companies that accept a lot of books and offer competitive price quotes for them.

Again, I suggest you visit the Sell Back Your Books and Cash 4 Books websites when searching in this way.

I would also suggest you visit the Powells Books website and see if you can sell any of your books there. Powells doesn’t always offer the highest price quotes – but they do accept a lot more books than most buyback companies, and will pay quickly.

A word of caution – Powells only accepts books in excellent condition (i.e. no highlighting, markings, tears, or ex-library books) so be sure to inspect your books carefully before selling to them.

Final Thoughts

When selling books online – especially when selling them to buyback companies – it’s to your advantage to compare price quotes from as many buyers as possible to ensure you’re getting a good deal. For this, Bookscouter can help you like no other website.

Nevertheless, when Bookscouter isn’t available, you should always have some backup online resources so you don’t end up wasting your valuable time at a thrift shop or library sale. Visit the websites and download the apps listed above, and you’ll be in a better position to make a profit even when the unexpected happens.

By the way, if you know of any additional websites and/or apps that work similar to Bookscouter, please feel free to comment below. And, as always, please subscribe to my blog for more tips on making extra money by selling books online quickly!

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