Hundreds in college textbooks - what to do with them all?

[LuvOrlando]

I'm bored and cleaning & realized my kids have literally hundreds of dollars in textbooks that I gathered. I remember half.com being great a long way back but they are gone now. I want to sell them but where? I looked it up on google and see many options but the fact a place exists doesn't mean its a good idea to engage. I haven't been in school for a while so if anyone out there has experience as a seller (buyer too I guess for summer classes) please share what you like & why. I know my daughter likes Poshmark for selling clothes so maybe there is something similar for books?

 

[Cruising Engineer]

Selling old textbooks is almost a lost art. The problem is publishers constantly bring out new editions of the same book for professors to require for a class (kickbacks? I don't know!). I'm currently a graduate student and haven't purchased a book in over 8 semesters (MS and PhD), I either rent from Amazon the physical book(and return it) or the ebook and it just disappears at the end of the rental time. My bookshelf only has current design standards (I'm in civil engineering), no textbooks. I just finished an online engineering course (designed as an online course before the university shut down). The instructor recorded the class a few years ago and kept referring to chapters and assignments from the 2nd edition textbook (he didn't update the PowerPoints either). We were in edition 5. It was a constant "Chapter 4 is now Chapter 7", "Assignment questions 2, 4, 6, 8 are now 6, 17, 3, 11", on and on the entire semester, the same information just rearranged by the publisher. Good luck.

 

[easyas123]

I sold my kids old text books from HS on Amazon. Perhaps you could check that out...if I recall correctly (once at the right place/on right page) you enter the ID number of the book and they give you a price. It's been a few years - probably two?
I suppose ebay may be a option, or donate them?
Good luck!

 

[runwad]

We used this site to see who would give us the most money for the kids books:

https://www.bookfinder.com/buyback/search/#9780078027109

 

[barkley]

We used this site to see who would give us the most money for the kids books:

https://www.bookfinder.com/buyback/search/#9780078027109

that's a great site.

i've tended to get the most from amazon since they don't require a minimum sell back like some of the others. trick is to hold on to the books that show no resale for at least one academic year b/c some classes are only offered once per year so what's not selling for fall of 2020 may be selling for spring 2021.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Selling old textbooks is almost a lost art. The problem is publishers constantly bring out new editions of the same book for professors to require for a class (kickbacks? I don't know!). I'm currently a graduate student and haven't purchased a book in over 8 semesters (MS and PhD), I either rent from Amazon the physical book(and return it) or the ebook and it just disappears at the end of the rental time. My bookshelf only has current design standards (I'm in civil engineering), no textbooks. I just finished an online engineering course (designed as an online course before the university shut down). The instructor recorded the class a few years ago and kept referring to chapters and assignments from the 2nd edition textbook (he didn't update the PowerPoints either). We were in edition 5. It was a constant "Chapter 4 is now Chapter 7", "Assignment questions 2, 4, 6, 8 are now 6, 17, 3, 11", on and on the entire semester, the same information just rearranged by the publisher. Good luck.

Out of curiosity, how much do you think your education has cost you in reading materials?

I will check out the other sites Easyas123, Runwad & Barkley thanks for the suggestion

Hoping some of the sites include shipping like poshmark where they take a cut and all the seller needs to do is print the label (I never did it but my daughter loves to sell and this is how she described it to me) I don't want to need to go weighing books if I can avoid it. Would be better if I could print a label and drop off into a mailbox.

 

[Disneyfan754321]

I sold my kids old text books from HS on Amazon. Perhaps you could check that out...if I recall correctly (once at the right place/on right page) you enter the ID number of the book and they give you a price. It's been a few years - probably two?
I suppose ebay may be a option, or donate them?
Good luck!

All of our went to Amazon.. we took amazon credit. It was super easy and they bought them all sent me a mailing label. ( they even took the pe book we bought for our community college)

 

[Summer2018]

I'm bored and cleaning & realized my kids have literally hundreds of dollars in textbooks that I gathered. I remember half.com being great a long way back but they are gone now. I want to sell them but where? I looked it up on google and see many options but the fact a place exists doesn't mean its a good idea to engage. I haven't been in school for a while so if anyone out there has experience as a seller (buyer too I guess for summer classes) please share what you like & why. I know my daughter likes Poshmark for selling clothes so maybe there is something similar for books?

We sold my daughter’s on Half.com.

 

[LuvOrlando]

We sold my daughter’s on Half.com.

I used that one ages ago but it wouldn't load, just tried again & it won't load for the 3rd time now - I've decided to sort it out with all the recommendations tomorrow - I think I have at least 10 books

 

[Summer2018]

I used that one ages ago but it wouldn't load, just tried again & it won't load for the 3rd time now - I've decided to sort it out with all the recommendations tomorrow - I think I have at least 10 books

It’s been a couple of years. Maybe it’s not a working website anymore. We bought and sold textbooks there. It was awesome.

 

[Hiitsme]

Have you thought about upcycling the books? I've seen some pretty amazing things that can be made from old books. Just google it. Some stuff looks easy, other things are way more advanced and DH can only take so much of my madness. Try your hand at it and then sell or keep and display your art.

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

I've used www.sellbackyourbook.com and www.chegg.com. I just did the sell back your book one a month ago.

Chegg was last year so I don't know if they are even in business anymore. You could google it and find out.

 

[danceintherain]

Out of curiosity, how much do you think your education has cost you in reading materials?

I will check out the other sites Easyas123, Runwad & Barkley thanks for the suggestion

Hoping some of the sites include shipping like poshmark where they take a cut and all the seller needs to do is print the label (I never did it but my daughter loves to sell and this is how she described it to me) I don't want to need to go weighing books if I can avoid it. Would be better if I could print a label and drop off into a mailbox.

Textbooks qualify for media mail, which is entirely based on weight, and much cheaper than any flat rate options out there. $2.66 for anything less than a pound and 51 cents per pound after that.

 

[Eastern]

Most important point is to sell the books as soon as you are done with them. When a subsequent updated text comes out, your book plunges in value.

Conversely, sometimes I have tried to sell a book immediately and gotten a very low price offer, then I wait a semester (might as well) and the book goes up a lot in price offered.

 

[disneyseniors]

I'm bored and cleaning & realized my kids have literally hundreds of dollars in textbooks that I gathered. I remember half.com being great a long way back but they are gone now. I want to sell them but where? I looked it up on google and see many options but the fact a place exists doesn't mean its a good idea to engage. I haven't been in school for a while so if anyone out there has experience as a seller (buyer too I guess for summer classes) please share what you like & why. I know my daughter likes Poshmark for selling clothes so maybe there is something similar for books?

I can tell you what I did with all my expensive Nursing degree books.
Keep them 30 years, get them out, look at the way things were done back then, and laugh!!! LOL
I think I finally threw them away; totally obsolete.
Just trying to add some humor into a no-win situation

 

[Shanna-like-Banana]

As a current student, the top places I look for books first are on social media sites and Amazon.
FaceBook Marketplace, Facebook Book Exchange groups/pages for that specific school and schools in the area, Craigslist. Facebook Community "For Sale" pages/groups. If those don't pan out, I go straight to Amazon.

I personally do not look for textbooks at common book stores, they just do not ever have the stock for what I need.

How old are the books? Are they even in the current rotation? Although they would give you pennies on the dollar, would you be able to sell them back to the school book store?

Like others have said above, a lot of publishers update the ISBN with very very minimal changes to the content. As such, I tend to email my professors and ask if an earlier addition is viable and then rent that version from Amazon for the semester. Selling to Amazon would be a route I would look into

 

[starry_solo]

I remember the days of half.com

 

[KrisJenn23]

Here are a few that I have used with no problem. Sellbackyourbook.com and Valorebooks.com

 

[LuvOrlando]

I ran them through and the BEST numbers are under $50, which is mind boggling considering they are not really old as my students are still in school and cost in the hundreds. When my son told me he couldn't get anything used at the university bookstore because everything is new I thought he was exaggerating and being lazy, its obvious he was not. I think these are better off being donated to my local high school.

How in the world do under privileged kids get by when books alone are around $500 and they can't recover any of that cost???? WTH, its unconscionable

 

[TarotFox]

They cover it with student loans. People who have to rely on student loans end up really indebted to them because those loans usually need to cover housing and food costs as well as supply costs, all the little campus fees, and then of course, tuition.