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!
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!