It’s a bit of a horrifying experience the first time you walk into a college bookstore. I remember the first time saying to myself, “You want a $145 for that?” To say I felt ripped off is an understatement, which is why this side hustle I’m about to share is all the more delicious.
I’ve written previously about how I sell used books online for extra money (“How to Become a Used Book Hunter“), but that involves going to garage sales every weekend and sweating the summer heat. Today I’m going to show you how to buy textbooks online at sites like Ebay, and then how to resell them online for a profit at places like ValoreBooks.com. Consider it my sweet revenge against the bookstores that overcharged me as a college student. 
Here’s how to do it…
There’s a handy little tool I use to make this work at RentScouter.com. Their site will let you plug in a book’s ISBN number (right next to the UPC) and then it will tell you how much the book is worth and which buyback company will give you the most money. I use this tool before buying a book to make sure that there is a company willing to pay more for the book than what the Ebay seller is charging.
Let me give you a couple of examples I found this week…
Here is a screenshot of an auction that just closed for the book “Fundamentals of Physical Geography.” It was sold for $52.50 (plus $3.99 for shipping) giving the buyer a total cost of $56.49. Using the tool at Rent Scouter, I see that Moola4Books.com is paying $61.25 for the same book and they will cover the cost of shipping if I send it to them, giving me a profit margin of $4.76.
Also on Rent Scouter, it shows that Amazon’s buyback program would be willing to give me a $71.77 Amazon gift card for this book. Amazon’s program also comes with free shipping so I would profit a $15.28 gift card. Not too bad!
Here’s another one:
After shipping charges, this book cost the buyer $37.11. Rent Scouter shows that it could be traded in for a $41.26 Amazon gift card, giving me a profit of $4.15.
As you can see the profit margins aren’t huge on a single book, because there are several other Ebayers playing this trade-in game. However, if you can average a $5 profit margin on each book, you only need to buy 5 books everyday to pocket an extra $750 dollars each month! Considering there over a million textbook auctions on Ebay right now, it shouldn’t be too hard to find 5 books a day to resell.
If you do decide to sell textbooks for cash, there are a couple of things you need to remember:
- Be sure to check the condition of the book before buying it. Most buyback companies expect a little wear and tear, but if there are ripped pages or severe damage to the cover, they probably won’t accept your book.
- Pack your books carefully. Most buyback companies will give you a prepaid shipping label, but you are responsible for your own packaging. If the books are damaged during transit, you’ll have to eat the loss.
- Be careful of payment fees. If you are offered the choice of a Paypal payment or a check payment, keep in mind that if you choose Paypal, you will need to deduct those fees from your profit margin.
I think this is a great idea. Your post always make me think and realize how many opportunities there are out there for me to make money. This was a great post
Hi! Thanks for this great post. I also read your other post on selling books online and I’ve been wanting to learn more about this. I will definitely be checking Cash4Books.net.
thanks! Tina “the book lady”
I do the amazon book selling as well and another thing to consider in your profit estimate, to see if it’s worth purchasing, is your shipping material. A good shipping box for a text book may run you at least a $1 with bubble wrap as well. If you plan on doing a lot buy in bulk from uline.com will get that cost down. Sometimes the actual shipping cost is less than what is given so there is a little there to help.
Just be sure you consider all costs when figuring your profit, the determine if it’s worth it
I did the same type of thing when I was in college. I would buy used books for the book store, and resell them on Amazon for a profit!
I call this a selling price arbitrage. A main concept of of doing a business is buying/manufacturing at low and selling at high. This is exactly you are doing here. Did you ever measure the per hour income you are making on average?
I love this concept. It is a great way for a college student to make money, and an ambitious college student to make a lot of money if they buy all of their books back from their friends.
How great would it be for a college student to open up their own pseudo used book store in the back of their car, or in their dorm room, and make huge profits every semester.
I actually work on a college campus, so maybe I will try to implement this at the end of this Fall semester. Awesome idea!
I have on occasion sold a book or two on Amazon. Most of the time it has been at a profit. This is the first time I have heard of rentscouter, so I will have to check it out.
I wish you would have written this article a few years ago.
We threw out a bunch of college text books. I’ll have to look up the value of some books we still have on hand.
Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for sharing another way to make money online! I’ve been considering doing this for a while, but it seems like a bit of trouble and somewhat risky. I’ve been using BigWords when I sell my textbooks back, but this site looks great too. I still can’t believe how expensive textbooks really are. If you can buy a new looking used book and sell it back as new, that’s the best way to make a profit.
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Interesting! It’s unbelievable to me that I still have a few of my college text books. They are sooooooo far out of date – the only thing they are good for is as a paper weight or fuel for the fire!
[...] The Penny Hoarder-How to Make $750 a Month Selling Used Books [...]
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ve used http://bookscouter.com to find places to sell too…not sure whether there’s a benefit of one site over the other? I think Book Scouter has more websites they search, but I’m not sure how accurate it always is.
Any suggestions for finding good textbook prices or the best textbooks to buy?
Thanks for your website! I just came across it a few days ago and really like all the great ideas you suggest.
Great post! If you want to save the hassle of packing and shipping, you can bring the bools to your local U on buy back day. The fist week of school there are usually reps at the bookstore for the buy back companies. Or at least this is true where I live.
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I’ve sold a good few books myself. Finding a good garage sale or freecycle with free textbooks is like finding gold!
This is a good idea to make some extra money. I love your site!
I don’t think the process described here is exact. The 2 examples involved auctions in progress. That means final prices definitely would be higher, which might eliminate the profit when the costs and value of time spent are incorporated. Also, you are NOT the one who is bidding. And if you participate, you might not end up as the winning bidder. So you would have no book !
Generally, arbitrage opportunity implies inefficiency in the marketplace. In this case the buying and selling of used books. It is a huge market with many participants and actors. There might be some pockets of inefficiency occasionally. But I seriously doubt you can make a business out of it.
I find textbooks at garage sales every weekend — but — they are always out of date. When I first started scouting for books three years ago, I would make $80 or $100 on the occasional textbook. Not any more. I think the book cycle has gotten shorter and publishers are obsoleting texts quicker, probably with the intent of killing the resale market.
I agree, text books are a waste of time because every couple years they are obsolete for newer books or different books all together. By the time they reach a yard sale or library books sale they are worthless. I know I held onto my college text books for at least five years as I was still paying off loans! Most people do…
Also, in the first example, the textbook is the Instructor’s Edition which Amazon won’t accept I don’t think. In the second, the book is listed as in “Good” condition, so you probably wouldn’t get the full Amazon value.
I think you’d probably have to grab books from yard sales or maybe library sales to make this work. I think even stores like the Salvation Army look online to see how much they should charge for things. I’m not sure whether they will sell high priced things online, though.
hmmmm…. I figure this may take a lot of time if you don’t know what books to look for exactly.
You can also go to a library book sale or free cart and find those technical tomes they think no one wants to read- for example, a huge book called The Boiler Operator’s Guide, set up an Amazon seller’s account, and sell them for an obnoxiously high profit. You have to go for those books that seem too strange or technical to be appealing (often textbook buyback stores will buy them too, but you can make a lot more money selling them on Amazon).
For two years I have bought textbooks on Ebay and sold them on Amazon. However, I am about to give up buying on Ebay because so many of the books now have been rated too high. Such as, a book with highlighting, notes, and tabs listed Like New. It is happening all the time and Ebay will not crack down on it.