How to Price Used Textbooks for Sale

Last Updated: March 24, 2023

If you are trying to figure out how to sell textbooks that you have used in previous school semesters, you may have a problem trying to figure out how much they are worth. You want to set a price that is low enough to get people to buy those textbooks. However, you also need to set a price that is high enough to make the book worth selling. Learning how to price used textbooks can get pretty tough.

Steps

1
Visit a textbook buyback price comparison website. You may want to visit a web site that buys and sells used books before you try to sell your own used textbook. After going to a used textbook sell back web site, you can search for the value of the used textbook in question by using that book's ISBN. This gives you an idea of how much the used textbook pricing is selling for to book buyback companies which is sometimes more than the price on Amazon, especially when you consider the commission you have to pay Amazon which is 15%.^{[1]
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2
Look for the Textbook's Original List Price. You should also look for the original value of the textbook you are trying to sell. You can do this by looking on the back of the book. If the original value is not found on the back of the textbook, you can visit an online bookseller for more information about the book. For example, you can find out the original value of a specific textbook at Amazon and other online web sites. All you need to do is type in the ISBN of the textbook and look at the list price of the book.^{[2]
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3
Look at the Textbook's Condition. Now you need to look at the condition of the textbook. Check out the cover and look for any tears, bends, or markings on the cover of the book. Once you have taken note of any changes to the book, you should flip through it to make sure that there are not too many notes, highlights, or underlined information. Although a little bit of notes and highlights will not harm the price of the book, a very beat up textbook will not be sold at a very decent price.^{[3]
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4
Determine The Price of Your Textbook. If you bought the book brand new and it is still in good condition, you should take around 25 percent off the original list value. If you bought the book used, you can take 25 percent off the price that you paid for the book. Make sure that you take more money off if the book is in bad condition.^{[4]
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Warnings

Remember when looking at the prices on Amazon, Half, etc that they charge you 15% to sell your book. Which means that even if you can sell it for $100, they will only send you $85, minus any account maintenance fees.

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Things You'll Need

You will need the ISBN of the book you are trying to sell. This is generally on the back of the book, but sometimes book stores put on a false label, so you can always check for the real ISBN on the copyright page on the inside front pages of the book.