Students can often spend up to over $1,000 dollars on textbooks throughout their time at a four-year college. You may wonder how you can sell your textbooks second-hand and make back the money you’ve spent.

The first way to profit off of old books is to resell them back to your college’s bookstore. This resource is the simplest way to make easy pocket change, as most professors will reuse the same book for multiple semesters at a college. Therefore, those books are constantly on the shelves for the next student to buy. A downside to this form of reselling is that college’s will often have a fixed rate at which they purchase books, which gives a disadvantage to the amount of money you may make off of them. 

The next way to resell textbooks is to sell them used online to buyers. You can often use a third party system such as Amazon or Bookscouter to make the best deals for you and your consumer for the best price. These sites can help with an easier way to ship out books and avoid the hassle of the post office, but they may take a percentage of your money for things such as shipping fees. 

A foolproof way to make full profit with the ability to place own prices is selling directly to students in need of textbooks. There can often be a high demand for specific textbooks, and they can become difficult to find online for reasonable prices.This is a great way to help new or incoming students who may have difficulty knowing where to find what they’re looking for.

A helpful tool to make sure you sell your books for maximum profit is looking for peak resale dates to ensure that you sell them at high demand times, such as right before each semester begins. 

Making money off of old textbooks is an easy  and efficient way to make money while also helping out those in need, especially as a college student.