I had a good couple of shelves of books from school that I honestly admitted I never was going to read again. I sat there and thought about what I would do in a situation with these books. And from my perspective I came to one conclusion.
Image taken with my iPhone
I found the process I’m about to describe and it was super easy and think it would be good to share with others. So, apologies if this appears like I’m selling something. I’M NOT. Now... back to my post...
These books I had on my shelves would just collect dust. I haven’t read them since the classes I had. And, I’m not going to read them in the future.
Rather than do this and take up space, I made the decision to sell these books. Several of the used books stores in my area were only accepting donations and not buying back books. So, with some luck running out on selling books locally I began my search for entities online. I came across Amazon. They bought books back. But, the price offered was really, REALLY low. And, I thought to myself, “Self.. these books should be getting at least a little more than what Amazon offers.”
So, I began some more searching online. And, I came across sellbackyourbook.com. I read up on it a little bit. And, from my view point, whatever they offered would be more than what I would get for donating them, which is nothing. So, I began looking at the website.
The only thing they asked for was the ISBN number on the back of the books. ISBN numbers are typically near the barcode on the book. Otherwise, it is in the first few pages inside the book. I had several books that I began inputting to see if I could sell it.
One book… nothing.
Then next book… $1.20.
The next… nothing.
Another book… $5!
This went on for about 20 minutes with me going through many of my college textbooks. About half of my books were accepted by sellbackyourbook.com. It’s nowhere near what I paid for them originally. But, it’s a lot more than I was expecting.
The company provides a prepaid label, which is cool. They gave me a quote for all the books. Now, I’m assuming that this price was for all the books to be in prime condition. My books are not all in prime conditions. So, I’m hoping to get about 60-80% of the price they quoted.
Now, I could sell the books an alternate way. But, then the concept of opportunity cost arises. I spent 20 minutes doing this process… box, label, and everything. Going through Ebay with a list of books or going another route take too much of my time. And the opportunity cost I associate with doing something else entirely wins out over trying to peddle books one at a time.
What will I do with the books that I don’t sell? Well, I’ll do what I was always planning to do originally…. Which was to just donate them.
Now to just ship the books!
Image taken by my iPhone.
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I think that's the unfortunate thing about selling textbooks back. Unless you do it soon after you've bought them, it's likely a new edition has come out, making yours almost worthless.
I still have many of my undergraduate textbooks. They've come in handy in graduate school, but someday I'm probably going to come to the same conclusion that they're just taking up space. Maybe I'll find someone who can make use of them.
I suppose the content of mine won't be irrelevant, since most of the basic principles of chemical engineering haven't changed and won't be changing any time soon.
Anyhow, glad you got something rather than nothing!