How to Sell Used Books Online for Extra Money
Ever since I discovered the joys of reading as a young girl, I’ve dreamed of having a Henry Higgins library in my home. I wanted a room with at least two levels of books, and there would be ladders so I could climb up to go get them.
Now I have a cozy little condo that barely holds a few bookcases. Since moving in, most of my books have been sitting forlornly in the storage space. That is not respecting my possessions.
So in the interest of saving my books and decluttering my life, I decided to start finding new homes for them.
An extremely easy way of doing that is with online used book buyback programs. The process usually is:
- Go to their website.
- Type in the ISBN of the book.
- They will tell you if they are buying that title and at what price.
- They provide a postage-paid shipping label.
- You box up your books and send them off.
- They pay you.
Yay! There is no cost to me, and for those who are curious, you can make a pretty good hourly return on your labor.
Through my process, I can absolutely recommend the following sources:
- Abe Books Payment by PayPal or mailed check. Will provide shipping labels through USPS or FedEx. Accepts books with highlighting and writing on the inside. One of my favorites.
- Cash4Books Payment by PayPal or mailed check. They will add 3% for PayPal payments to offset for those fees. That’s a really nice feature. Will provide shipping labels through USPS only. Accepts books with highlighting and writing on the inside.
- Textbooks.com Payment by mailed check only. Will provide shipping labels through USPS or UPS. Accepts books with highlighting and writing on the inside.
- Powell’s Books Payment by store credit only. Will provide shipping labels through USPS. Books must be clean and in pretty great shape.
Powell’s is very reliable and trustworthy, but they do have the strictest and most limiting sell-back choices. They, however, carry lots of new books and DVDs. I’m using my store credit with them to buy holiday presents.
Another great resource out there is bookscouter.com. This site lets you put in the ISBN once, and it’ll crawl through lots and lots of vendors for you. Everything is listed on one page so you know what your options are.
[This paragraph has been edited out since the glitch it discussed has been fixed.]
One last thing to keep in mind. Stock is always in flux. A book may not be worth any money one day and will be acceptable on the next.
After a certain point though, I just had to cart off the remaining three large boxes to the Salvation Army. Now, I do feel pretty freed up. Lugging books was always the hardest part of moving. At this point, I feel like I can just read and enjoy a book as it is in front of me. I don’t have to worry about cataloging it and making sure I have a place to keep it.
If I want to read it again years down the road, there is always the library or those lovely used bookstores. Perhaps I’ll run into one of my old titles one day in the future.
Do you have any other buyback vendors to recommend?
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
Thanks for the mention of bookscouter. I didn’t realize that Abebooks pricing wasn’t working, but that has been fixed and their correct prices should be showing up now.
Thanks Chris and Brandon for stopping by. I’m using bookscouter all the time to get through these piles.
Thank yous also go out to the Rich Life Carnival and the Carnival of Family Life for including me.
What a great idea. I’ve been collecting books for ages, and finally I realized they were weighing me down. Mr. Poorhouse and I carted off more than 30 cartons of books to our towns “donate books to Africa” trailer a few years ago, and we made enough room for my husband to have his own office in our home instead of the “library” (which honestly was just a room with piles of books everywhere.)
We can always do more weeding though, so thanks for the tips about selling them.
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I used ecampus books and was satisfied. I would be curious to know who in your analysis paid the highest? I have soldback many dvds and CDs and in that arena i have found mx123.com to function much like the book buyback dealers you mention above. I use them because i found they pay well for dvds. Of the coarse if you want to get the absolute most you can i will sometimes use craigslist – if i have the time.
Polly Poorhouse, I love those literacy donation organizations. Thanks for reminding us of that option.
Wayne, I didn’t know you could also do online sell back with CDs and DVDs. Your information is good timing, because after I’m done with my books, I’m going to whittle down my CD collection next.
As far as book sell back, I sold so many different types of books that no one vendor came out as always the best. Powell’s Books is consistently in the higher range, but they only give credit. Abe Books isn’t always the highest, but I think they have the easiest interface and procedure.
Cash4Books took fewer of my titles, and Textbook.com’s website needs to be a bit more user-friendly. All of them came through for me though. I haven’t had a bad experience with any of them.
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