The e-commerce giant Amazon is well-known for offering a huge selection of new and used books and textbooks at highly affordable prices, regardless of the products it sells.
You may wonder if Amazon will buy your books or textbooks if you have some lying around the house that you no longer use. Here are some things I’ve learned!
What will Amazon be buying in 2022?
From 2022 onwards, Amazon will no longer purchase books directly. A textbook exchange program existed at the school prior to April 2020, but this program was discontinued. If you are trying to sell books/textbooks outside of Amazon, you can sign up on the Amazon Marketplace as a seller.
Textbooks can be traded in on Amazon?
You could enter the ISBN, confirm the condition, and ship back a book to receive a competitive price based on demand and quality with Amazon’s textbook buyback program.
Every semester, students throughout the country used this standalone service to recover at least some of the costs of pricey textbooks.
This program was quietly discontinued by Amazon in 2020, most likely due to students renting textbooks rather than purchasing them, as well as counterfeit risks.
However, there are still a few (slightly less straightforward) ways on Amazon to trade textbooks even without a specific platform.
What are the steps to selling textbooks on Amazon?
Amazon offers a trade-in program for electronic goods and other products as the first way to sell textbooks.
This option, though, is not for everyone: Amazon updates its list of available trade-in items regularly, and most books are not listed.
The Amazon trade-in page is definitely worth checking out and giving a shot.
As an alternative, setting up a seller account on Amazon is the best way to sell textbooks in 2022.
If you want to sell books as new or used products, you can join Amazon’s third-party marketplace.
In your case, you may be starting out with just a few books, so it works just like a small business with a lot of products.
If you decide to sell as an individual or a professional, you can ship directly to customers or have Amazon ship the books for you.
In order to complete the sign-up process and make your book listings live, all you need is your personal details, your banking details, and the book’s ISBN and SKU.
Also, if you don’t want to list your books/textbooks on Amazon, you can post them on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, or Craigslist.
Textbooks Online: Is it Worth It?
In the United States, students pay an average of $1,200 in textbook costs every year.
Therefore, selling textbooks and other reading materials that would otherwise collect dust seems logical.
You may also have a better chance of attracting students if you have older editions or niche titles, since students may be searching for them but not finding them at their university bookstores.
In addition to Amazon, there are other sites that sell textbooks as well.
There are thousands of textbooks and novels available on the leading e-commerce site.
Seeing similar listings makes it easy to choose a price that matches your volume and quality.
As part of that, you have the option to choose whether you want the fulfillment to be handled by you or by Amazon. You can handle the storage and shipping yourself or pay Amazon a fee to take care of everything for you.
You can also offer free two-day shipping with Amazon Prime when you sell your textbooks via Amazon fulfillment. This could help lure more customers.
Upon receipt of the item, you will be charged a total based on the item’s weight. The fee covers pick-up, packing, shipping, customer service, and potential returns.
Many sellers find that these fees are worth it, especially if they don’t wish to deal with the hassle in the future.
Summary
Despite lack of official explanation, Amazon’s textbook buyback program was shut down in 2020 amid rental trends and counterfeit book problems.
Instead of using a quick trade-in program, you can now apply to be an Amazon seller to sell books in good condition.
As a seller, you must register on Amazon Marketplace and list the books as products, which can then be sold directly or through Amazon Fulfillment.
There are a number of third-party textbook selling sites you can look into if you’d prefer to sell books off of Amazon instead.
Your textbook listings will be seen more often by Amazon shoppers, given that they receive upwards of 200 million unique visitors a month.