Category Archives: Book Buyback Companies

The Best Places to Sell Textbooks Online Besides Amazon Part 1

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Stack of Books

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?

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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

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Laptop and Books RESIZED

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?

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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!