Quick Tip: Thinking about selling your textbooks? Get a quote online now.
Selling back textbooks can be a great way to recoup some of the costs of the outrageous prices of textbooks.
Unfortunately, school bookstores usually only offer a fraction of the original purchase price and in turn sell it again for a nice profit at the expense of students.
With May being the biggest month for textbook buyback, now would be a good time to publish the results from our study that compared online textbook sellers.
While this study mostly covered where to buy the cheapest textbooks online, we also looked at other items of interest, such as which site offered the highest buyback price.
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In the study, we named Textbooksrus.com the best place to sell textbooks. Students should definitely check out this service and get a quote on their books, as more than likely it will be a better price than the college bookstore can offer.
Here are the results from our study looking at buyback prices. What is nice is that there are online textbook sellers that offer a guaranteed buyback on most books, giving you piece of mind that you won’t be stuck with the book at the end of the quarter.
For reference, the textbooks used in this study are:
| Title | ISBN | |
| Book A | Biology | 0073227390 |
| Book B | Contemporary Business | 0324359292 |
| Book C | Essentials of Psychology | 0618713123 |
| Book D | Intermediate Accounting | 0471749559 |
More on the original textbook prices study can be found here.
Results
Here are the Best Places to Sell your Textbooks:
| Textbook Retailer | Book A | Book B | Book C | Book D | Total |
| 1. TextbooksRus | $64.46 | $53.75 | $34.80 | $61.94 | $214.95 |
| 2. Textbooks.com | $63.75 | $51.60 | $35.10 | $46.00 | $196.45 |
| 3. Barnes & Noble | $63.75 | $51.60 | $35.10 | $46.00 | $196.45 |
| 4. WeBuyTextbooks.com | $58.58 | $54.77 | $8.65 | $73.82 | $195.82 |
| 5. Valore Books | $53.55 | $48.30 | $30.45 | $61.95 | $194.25 |
| 6. eTextshop | $61.46 | $51.21 | $20.49 | $59.05 | $192.21 |
| 7. BookByte | $54.78 | $43.92 | $30.13 | $56.84 | $185.67 |
| 8. BooksValue | $53.76 | $42.96 | $29.76 | $58.56 | $185.04 |
| 9. CollegeBooksDirect | $58.50 | $49.50 | $33.50 | $43.50 | $185.00 |
| 10. TextbookBuyer.com | $50.41 | $40.33 | $28.01 | $54.89 | $173.64 |
| 11. eCampus | $51.00 | $43.00 | $29.00 | $50.00 | $173.00 |
Of course, the price of both buying and selling textbooks can vary daily in association with supply and demand.
Please note that when selling back your textbooks you are expected to keep the book in good condition and have all CDs that were included with the book or you may not get your full price.
Just remember all textbooks prices will vary by textbook website. To maximize your return when trying to sell textbooks online, check out a few of the top textbook sellers and see what they have to offer. Getting a quote for your textbook is a very simple process of entering the ISBN of the textbook you wish to sell into a form on their website.