Hey gang,
I’m moving overseas so I’m trying to find a way to sell some of my old university textbooks. I have a lot on IT, Economics and Marketing that are still relevant to this day.
So what are the best methods of selling them?
I’m not a member of either of the Universities here so I can’t sell on their classifieds. Any other ideas?
Thanks
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Do you know anyone that is still a student (or staff) at ANU? If yes you could always ask them to post the ad for you but put your contact information so that prospective buyers contact you directly. I have sold heaps of things using the ANU classifieds.
Alternatively try allclassifieds or gumtree? Depending on how much time and energy you want to spend you could also print some ads on paper and post them around the IT and Economics departments?
textbookexchange.com.au
ebay.com.au
Donate Them To Library.
Find an ANU friend who will take them to the second hand book store (part of ANUSA).
http://sa.anu.edu.au/book-shop
Otherwise i’d work out what courses they’re suitable for. Print off many A4 signs (course, text book and a good cheap price), and put them up around the lecture halls for the year below. Do it now before we have exams. Oh, and watch out for time wasters. I’ll put money on the fact you’ll get calls from a certain demographic asking for you to hold onto it for them until next year.
AFAIK some of the residential colleges may have a library where the college will buy textbooks for their collection. This would be via a resident though.
I think you’ll need to be realistic in terms of price for any of the ideas to work.
EBay. But best to wait for the start of the semester because no-one buys their text books six months in advance.
krats said :
Thanks. That will be my last resort.
neanderthalsis said :
i’m not going to be in Australia then. Thanks anyway
Also an idea to check if the books are still recommended readings for the courses: http://www.coop-bookshop.com.au/bookshop/action/DataSubjSelect
A lot of books can still be useful but I’ve found lecturers updated the actually course texts yearly.
Exchange them for money.
I’ve never understood people that sell off their reference texts for far less than they paid. For the few dollars they are worth why don’t you keep them both for future reference as the start of your reference library and for the history they hold.
creative_canberran said :
That would be because lecturers are often authors too.
They will happily release a new edition just so the page numbers change and you then spend half your time trying to track down the correct texts in your old edition (references always quoted in page numbers)… so you purchase the latest edition.
The other great spinoff from this is that lecturers often become top/best selling authors.
Or maybe i’m just a cynic and/or conspiracy theorist?
How about considering the environment? Burn them!
You’ll get a big audience from Text Book Exchange.
Classified said :
Sorry, I don’t follow your logic here…
poetix said :
Sorry, just a bit of shoit stirrage…
screaming banshee said :
Depends how “advanced” they are to be honest. First year (and some second year stuff) is basically a hard copy wikipedia of your subject area, and would have no purpose in the work force.
screaming banshee said :
maybe you didn’t read my original post. I’m moving overseas. I can’t take 60kg of books with me. I held onto them for a long time as reference books. Sadly people move around the world and we can’t take everything with us as much as I would hope to.
Thanks to everyone who has responded. I’ll give textbook exchange a go. If I don’t get very far with them, then the days before I leave I will donate to the local libraries.
Cheers
krats said :
Sorry, unless they’re classics, the uni libraries won’t want them – their user base need the current edition of textbooks, not older editions, and if they already have copies which aren’t heavily used they don’t have the shelf space to take on more. (Processing donations is actually much more expensive than you’d think.) They’ll already have a lot of relevant old texts in marketing, IT and economics.
I’d be interested in the IT books. If you can provide us a link to the textbook exchange page or add the book listing to a google speadsheet and post it up here. If you are a member of OCAU, put it up on the forums there and see what response you get
They may be current in what info the textbooks contain, but if they are not the current versions used for any courses then you’d be lucky to sell them for anything. Lifeline accepts these kinds of books as a donation also.
They really won’t be worth the money and time spent trying to sell them IMO.
watto23 said :
While I left university 10 years ago i’ve also bought texts that are current and relevant that were needed for self education for my job. Those I will try to sell on ebay or textbook exchange.
as for the rest…
i’ve decided i’ll donate them to a public library. but not in Canberra – since people have access to material readily. I’ll donate them to probably the Batemens Bay public library when I am down there next week.
Bateman’s Bay Library sounds like a better deal – ACT public libraries won’t touch donations. They just give everything to Lifeline. They have no staff to catalogue them and they don’t want anything more than 5 years old anyway (and that includes the history books…
)
I would just sell them online. That is obviously where you’re going to make the most money from selling. Try and check out places like eCampus.com where you can get some great deals on any kind of textbooks you have.