The question when buying books for college is where can I find the best deal on the limited income that a college student has. Let’s say things aren’t going well as you jaunt over to the local bookstore to pick up your required reading for your classes. You just can’t seem to find what you need or the place is so big and crowded it would take forever to get out of there so you can make it to your next appointment. Where should you go then? Of course there is the online alternative. Here are a couple of sites in which you can either buy or sell back your books back at good prices:
Textbooksnow.com: This site is very good and they buy back a wide variety of books. As a personal testimonial this site bought back one of my Economics textbooks from three years ago that my local bookstore would not take back! How fantastic is that? To get back to square one though, how do you buy books on the site? Well, here is the lowdown. Go to Textbooksnow.com and click on buy books. Then enter the title, the author, ISBN # (typically a bar code number on the right side of the back of a book in my experience) and then any keywords that might aide in the perusing and then click Search. Wait a second and abracadabra something should pop up that fits your fancy as far as what I’m sure you are dying to read.
So I did a search for a “George Bill”, two items come up and then I click on one. An option should come up with a quoted price and the tab that says “Buy Now.” You click on that and then you give them your personal information in a form and your book should be there within a reasonable amount of time. It really does vary depending on the book and how easy they are to locate as to how expediently your purchase will get there. They also have a “Browse all Categories” preference and it has a veritable plethora of choices involved within it such as anything from Antiques and Collectibles to True Crime.
Now for the fun part of the site, the part where demand and supply both show up at the door. The segment where you get to put some of that legal tender in your pocket instead of passing it out to those bookstores who are just trying to rob the college kids of their hard earned cash. There are four rudimentary, yes four easy steps in selling your books on Textbooksnow.com. First, go to textbooksnow.com and click sell. Second, you will receive an instant potential dollar value for that book. Thirdly, send them the book and they pay the postage! Yes, you heard me correctly; they pay the pay the postage.
The fourth step once your book is sent is to sit back and wait for your check. Make sure that you print out your Buyback confirmation form and send it with the book or they won’t take it. Also, make sure that they do actually sell that book on the site so make sure to check ISBN again because occasionally they won’t want to purchase your book. A key component of this as well is whether or not the book is in good condition.
That is sort of a judgment call on the seller’s part, but please be considerate of whether or not you would like to buy a book that is all scuffed up and semi-destroyed. It makes you think of the Golden Rule in a sense and treating others the way they would want to be treated. I’m sure we’ve all got a horror story or two where we went home thinking we got the book we need for our class and then it turned out the book was either the wrong one or in really porous condition. The best advice I have for someone who is trying to sell their book to Textbooksnow.com is to be as careful as possible and make sure that you wrap everything up carefully so that way it will end up remaining a quality textbook and by the letter of the law good business transaction.
