Selling Textbooks on Amazon

I still remember freshman year wandering into the bookstore and buying books at exorbitant prices and not blinking an eye. Why would my college ever want to take advantage of me? When I was forced to make a purchase of over $1000 in books one semester, I started looking elsewhere.

Since then my love of amazon has grown. I know that there are other slightly less expensive options like halfprice books, but I love the free shipping, reputation, and convenience of amazon. If you are a student, don't hesitate to sign up for a free amazon prime account - FREE 2 Day shipping with no minimum purchase.

Enough of the advertisement - this year I began selling back every textbook I have ever owned. YAY money!!! One of my many stacks is shown above. There is no point in carrying a stack of books I will never touch again across the country. Quickly I discovered that, once again, my college bookstore was ripping of students by buying back their gently used textbooks at pennies on the dollar. Hence, I returned to amazon.

I opened up an amazon seller account (at no cost) and began listing textbooks by their ISBN #. In order to sell textbooks quickly, I always price the book a dollar lower than the current lowest use price. I have also found that the more detailed and specific the description of the book the more likely to sell.

On my very first day I sold 2 books and since then I have sold more than 20. Amazon requires that you ship the book within 2 business days of purchase - so make sure you are not on vacation while listing items! To save money I break down boxes from my research lab and use them to ship my books as shown below. You will need a lot of heavy duty tape. I then take my books to the Post office and ship them media mail. Once the shipment is confirmed I get my money ASAP.

So - what is the catch??? Amazon will take 15% of the cost of your book and will charge .99cent closing fee. They will credit you $3.99 for shipping no matter the weight or size of the book. Regardless you will make more than selling it back to the bookstore.

Happy selling ;)