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8 Great Book Buyback Companies To Sell Books To

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Selling books online to book buyback companies can be a great way to make extra money – if you know which buyback companies to sell your books to.

The problem is new sellers don’t always know which book buyback companies are the most reputable, pay the fastest, or even pay at all.

Moreover, some don’t bother to learn what type of books a buyback company will and will not accept before they send them a box of books.

As a result, rookie book scouts can send books worth a lot of money to book buyback companies, only to receive an email telling them the book is not in “acceptable condition” and will not be paid for.

Fortunately this won’t be a problem for you, since I’ve created a list of the 8 best book buyback companies I’ve personally sold used books to – and what type of books they will and will not take.

Read this list carefully! It could mean the difference between a great payday and no payday at all!

(By the way, all of these book buyback companies appear on Bookscouter.com, making it easy for you to compare price quotes between them).

Textbooks.com

Located in Columbia, Montana, Textbooks.com is one of my favorite book buyback companies to sell books to. They buy a wide variety of books including textbooks (of course!), paperback novels, history books, recent bestsellers, science books, business books, classic fiction titles, self-help books, and even a few young adult novels.

Textbooks.com will accept ex-library books as well as books with minor highlighting, underlining, and handwritten notes in the pages.

That said, you should never send Textbooks.com (or any book buyback company for that matter) books with water damage, unpleasant odors, stains, missing pages, broken bindings, or torn covers. If you find a workbook or study manual, make sure the pages aren’t already filled in – no book buyback company will be able to sell that book.

One fantastic feature of the Textbooks.com book buyback program is that they guarantee their price quotes for 30 days – so the price quote you receive for any books you sell to them will not change for several weeks, unlike other book buyback companies whose price quotes can change every day.

You can also buy books from Textbooks.com and receive a 10% bonus if you re-sell books that you bought from Textbooks.com back to them. To get this bonus, you’ll need to log into the Textbooks.com account you used to buy the books in the first place so Textbooks.com can see you’re re-selling a past purchase.

If you sell books to Textbooks.com, be aware that you need to sell at least $10 worth of books before they’ll let you complete your order (not usually a problem since they buy so many books and offer very competitive price quotes).

I’ve never had a problem receiving payment from Textbooks.com which can come via Pay Pal (which usually takes two to three weeks) or by check (about a month).

By the way, Textbooks.com offers a free UPS label you can use to send your package that provides very fast shipping – just remember to drop your package off at a UPS store!

Want to learn more about Textbooks.com? Check out my interview with them!

Cash 4 Books

In recent years, I’ve sold many books to Cash 4 Books since not only do they offer nice competitive prices for books, but they also pay very fast (sometimes in as little as one or two weeks). The minimum order for this company is only $5.00 worth of books.

According to their FAQ page, Cash4Books will accept ex-library books, but only if they are marked as “withdrawn.” (I personally rarely send them ex-library books unless they offer me a really good price).

Cash 4 Books will accept books that have minimal (as in less than 50% of the book) highlighting, underlining, and/or writing.

Cash 4 Books also offers a free app that you can download onto your iPhone or Android and use to scan book barcodes and find Cash 4 Book’s buyback prices. Personally, I prefer using Bookscouter (since you can see prices from multiple buyback companies) but the Cash 4 Books app can be useful if you run into a situation where you can’t use Bookscouter.

Finally, Cash 4 Books regularly offers bonus codes that you can enter when placing your buyback orders, giving you some extra money on your buyback order. You can arrange to have these bonus codes emailed directly to you when you sign up for a Cash 4 Books account.

Powells Books

While many book buyback companies buy and sell only online, Powells Books actually has a giant bookstore located in Portland, Oregon. Book buybacks are sold through both this store and their website.

I’ve encountered advantages and disadvantages from selling to Powells.

First, Powells accepts more books than almost any other book buyback company I’ve dealt with. From recent bestsellers to children’s books to self-help books, if you can’t sell your books to other book buyback companies, odds are Powells will make you an offer.

Powells also offers a 50% bonus on all their books if sellers accept payment in trade credit. This trade credit is deposited in an online Powells account you can use to buy books or DVDs from the Powells store. If you’re a student looking to buy your textbooks for a better price or a movie buff, you can get great deals this way.

On the flipside, the books you sell to Powells must be in excellent condition. Where a few book buyback companies might accept books with a little underlining or bent pages, if you send a book like that to Powells, you won’t be paid for it.

Because of this, if you find a book that Powells offers a price quote on, make sure to flip through the book before you buy it for re-sale.

Powells will not accept ex-library books, books with underlining, highlighting, notes, weak bindings, or covers with any markings or excessive wear. Book Club editions of popular books will also be rejected.

To sell books to Powells, you’ll need to get a combined price quote of $5.00 or send them a minimum of three books.

Because of Powells high standards on book condition, some of the buyback packages I’ve sent to them have been reduced in value due to a book that did not meet their standards. Nevertheless, I continue to sell books to Powells since they accept so many books and because they always send me my payment fairly quickly via Pay Pal.

By the way, Powells offers a free Media Mail shipping label that you can slap onto your package and ship via the United States Postal Service.

Sell Back Your Book

Located in Aurora, Illinois, Sell Back Your Book also accepts a wide variety of popular fiction and nonfiction books. In the past, I’ve sold them parenting books, art history textbooks, books on the paranormal, and business books.

Like Powells Books, books sold to Sell Back Your Book must be in excellent condition. That means no ex-library books, texts with underlining/highlighting/notes, or any book covers with lots of wear.

Minimum buyback orders to Sell Back Your Book must be at least $5.00. Sellers also have the option of choosing a free Media Mail shipping label or a faster FedEx label that will deduct $3.00 from your payment if your total buyback order is less than $50.00. I recommend choosing the free Media Mail shipping label.

Like Powells Books, I’ve occasionally had some of my buyback packages lowered in value if some of my books do not meet Sell Back Your Book’s high standards. Because of this, I’m very careful to only send books in virtually new condition to this company.

Payment arrives very fast (usually in two to three weeks) by Pay Pal.

TextbookRush

Located in Grandview Heights, Ohio, TextbookRush (formerly TextbookRus) offers very high price quotes on the books it wants (I’ve sold books for as high as $70.00 to this company). Most of these high-price books tend to be textbooks, but I’ve also sold novels, business books, pop culture encyclopedias, and even gardening books for good prices.

TextbookRush will accept books with minor highlighting, underlining, and handwritten notes. They’ll also buy ex-library books, but only if the books have been stamped “Withdrawn.”

Unlike some textbook buyback companies, TextbookRush will buy (and sell) International editions of textbooks (which are textbooks that are sold overseas and priced cheaper). Instructor editions of textbooks (or textbooks meant for teachers with answers to the quiz questions inside) can also be sold. Just make sure to indicate this when you sell them the book.

Minimum buyback orders to TextbookRush must be $15.00 or more. All buyback orders also receive a free SmartPost shipping label – make sure to check if it needs to be dropped off at a USPS or Fed Ex location.

Like Powells Books, TextbookRush offers a bonus if sellers accept payment via trade credit that they can spend at TextbookRush’s online store. However, this bonus is very small, so unless you buy a lot of books from TextbookRush, take the money.

Sellers can choose to be paid via Pay Pal or check – I recommend Pay Pal as I’ve found TextbookRush pays extremely fast this way. Most of my Pay Pal payments arrive in less than two weeks and I’ve even had occasions where I was paid in less than a week.

By the way, TextbookRush often offers bonuses and special promotions that can substantially increase the value of your buyback package – so be sure to check their website for any special offers when you decide to sell books to them!

CKY Books

CKY Books is located in Nicholasville, Kentucky and purchases a wide selection of books including textbooks, medical, religious, political, history, art, parenting, and self help books.

Books with minor highlighting, underlining, and notes are acceptable. Ex-library books are also accepted, but CKY will deduct quoted prices by 30% for these books (so you’re probably better off selling ex-library books to Textbooks.com).

Minimum buyback orders to CKY Books must be worth at least $20.00. Pay Pal payments come fairly quickly (about two weeks after your buyback package arrives) and CKY provides your choice of free UPS, FedEx, or USPS shipping.

One cool thing about CKY is that they buy additional items like movies, music, and games, and you can earn even more extra cash by including these additional items with your book buyback orders.

For more information on CKY, be sure to check out the informative interview I recently published!

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. You can also print free UPS shipping labels for your buyback packages.

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.

Valore pays quickly – I’ve had most of my PayPal payments come in less than 2 weeks after shipping the books. If you request to be paid by check, you’ll probably have to wait an extra week.

Book it Buyback

Based in Alton, Illinois, Book it Buyback is a book buyback company I’ve sold to multiple times with success. They buy textbooks, science books, and also books on paranormal subjects. However, they typically don’t buy paperback fiction titles.

Books with minor underlining and highlighting will be accepted. You can also sell ex-library books to Book it Buyback – but according to their policies, you’ll only receive 50% of the price quote for these books.

Unlike most book buyback companies, Book it Buyback also buys Advance Reader Copies, which are uncorrected proofs of books sent to book reviewers before the book is actually published. However, Book it Buyback only pays 50% of the price quoted for these books.

(By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never sold an Advance Reader Copy to this company, so I can’t really comment on how well this works).

Minimum buyback orders for Book it Buyback must be at least $10.00. They currently offer a Media Mail shipping label. Payment arrives fairly quickly via Pay Pal.

Final Thoughts

Depending on what type of books you find to sell online, you may find yourself selling most of your books to one or two of the book buyback companies above.

Visit some of the websites listed above. Learn more about their buyback policies and enter some of the ISBN numbers of your books into their buyback search to see if they’ll offer you a good price quote for your books.

It’s also possible that you may have better luck selling to some of the other book buyback companies offering price quotes on Bookscouter.com. If you’d like to learn more about these companies, check out 2 More Great Book Buyback Companies to Sell Books To and 2 Great Book Buyback Companies to Sell Textbooks To.

To learn more about how you can use this free online resource to make extra money, read my article, How to Sell Your Gold Dust Books Online for the Best Prices, and then subscribe  to my blog to receive all my latest tips for selling books online fast!

Want to learn even more ways to sell books online quickly and for higher prices? Check out my new Sell Books Fast Online eBook series and discover great strategies for selling books for better profits on Amazon!

 

How To Make Sure You Get Paid for the Books You Sell Online

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Recently, I encountered a problem everyone who sells books online dreads. My payment for some of my buyback orders wasn’t sent to me.

This is something you’ll encounter every now and then if you sell books to buyback companies on a regular basis. While the companies you find on Bookscouter are usually reputable, even these companies encounter occasional glitches that delay your payment.

This is why it’s so important you keep good records of all of your buyback orders (something I cover in How to Record Your Sales When Selling Books Online) and keep track of which of your orders were paid and which are still unpaid.

To make sure you get paid for all of your books, please follow the following tips:

Learn How Buyback Companies Pay Before You Sell to Them

Most of the buyback companies you’ll find on Bookscouter are good businesses that pay quickly and efficiently.

That said, different buyback companies pay in different ways and on different time tables, and you should always make sure you know each company’s payment policies before you sell them any books.

Most buyback companies like Textbooks.com, Valore, Chegg, Cash4Books, and Sell Back Your Book pay via PayPal and deposit your money within 1-2 weeks into your PayPal account. (If you don’t have a PayPal account and/or don’t want to open one, most companies will mail your money via check – but this can take a month on average).

A few companies like Sell Back Books offer to deposit money directly into your bank account (which requires that you share your account numbers with them). Sell Back Books also offers the mailed check option.

And still other buyback programs, like Amazon.com’s Trade-In Program, pay in trade credit (not cash) and deposit your payment in your personal online trade credit account. While most people prefer to be paid in cash, trade credit does come with advantages that I cover in Should You Sell Your Books for Amazon Credit?

Make sure to review each buyback company’s website to learn their personal policies on payment. Many of these companies also have policies on the type of books they will buy that may affect which companies you can sell to. I cover many of these issues in my article 8 Great Book Buyback Companies To Sell Books To.

Bookscouter also offers a five-star rating system and a place where sellers can leave reviews of their experiences with different buyback companies. You can find these reviews by going to Bookscouter, clicking the “Vendors” link, and clicking on any buyback company you’d like to research. Read these reviews before selling your books to a new company – they might alert you to any unexpected polices regarding payment.

Email Buyback Companies That Haven’t Paid You

Okay, but what happens if you do all your research and a buyback company still doesn’t pay you?

First, double check your Buyback Order Records to see how much time has passed. If it’s been two weeks since you sent your order to this company, wait a few more days – sometimes a company can experience a slight delay as it processes your order.

If it’s been over a month and that company promises payment in two weeks, however, you need to contact the company. Go to the company’s website, find their email address under the “Contact Us” link and send them a message informing them of the situation.

Make sure to inform the company of when you sent your buyback order, the buyback order number, and the total price quote the company gave for your books. (You should have this information in your records – your online account on the buyback company’s website should have the information as well).

Politely inform the company of how long it’s been since you sent your order and ask them when you can expect to receive your payment.

Here’s a sample email that I use for these situations – feel free to modify it for your own use (I’ve marked the critical areas in bold).

Hello XYZ Books

Last March 21st, I sent a buyback order (Order #123456789) with the quoted price of $35.

It has been over a month since I sent that order, and I have still not received payment.

Could you please let me know when I can expect to be paid?

Thanks!

Usually, this is all it takes for a company to fix the problem – in the situation I described above, both buyback companies (Sell Back Books and CKY Books) responded politely to my emails in less than a day and sent my payments in full immediately.

By the way, if the company resolved your issues quickly and politely, please leave some positive feedback for them on Bookscouter. Just click the “Vendors” link on the top of the website, find the company, and click on “Leave Feedback.” (Both CKY and Sell Back Books got good reviews from me).

If The Company Refuses to Pay

Sometimes, a buyback company may refuse to pay for some or all of your books – claiming the books did not meet their criteria for books in good condition.

This doesn’t mean the buyback company is trying to cheat you – if you sent them a lot of books without checking them closely, it’s possible some were water damaged or had excessive markings inside, making them impossible for the company to resell. In these cases, you just need to be more careful about the books you sell.

In other situations, however, a buyback company will flat-out refuse to pay you with no explanation – and may even fail to respond to your emails at all.

Sadly, this happened to me with a new buyback company I tried to sell to – and I wound up losing several books I could have sold to other buyback companies.

Unfortunately in these cases, it’s virtually impossible for you to get paid – which is why you need to be careful about selling to new buyback companies that don’t have a proven track record of paying quickly for their books.

If this happens, you should leave a review on Bookscouter informing others of your bad experience – this will warn others against doing business with that company and can get Bookscouter to remove that company from their website if enough people give them low ratings.

Fortunately, such experiences are rare – after over six years in the business, I can honestly say that I’ve only encountered two companies like this. As long as you research good buyback companies, keep good records of your buyback orders, and communicate with your buyback companies, you’ll easily generate a steady stream of reliable income from your online book sales.

Want to receive more tips and tricks for how to sell books online for extra money? Subscribe to my blog!

Do you have a question or suggestion for a future blog article? Email me at sellbooksfastonline@gmail.com.

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!

Websites Like Bookscouter

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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!