Best Web Buys Books
If you want to sell books online, BookScouter is one of the best platforms. When it was first launched, its main purpose was to help sell textbooks for the best price, but now, with 30+ vendors integrated into the platform, it helps find the best offers for buying and selling used books, too.
best web buys books
Though it has lost popularity due to its auction-based sales and the appearance of more popular reselling apps, eBay is still a solid option for those looking to sell used books online in 2023. However, eBay is not the best place to sell textbooks because auctions often lead to sellers being lowballed, resulting in a loss of profit.
Chegg used to be the best place to sell your old textbooks and make a profit. It featured fair prices and free shipping for the textbooks purchased. Unfortunately, not anymore. As of 2023, Chegg no longer purchases books; instead, it sends you to another brand to sell your books.
Despite selling books for over ten years, AbeBooks is somewhat of a newcomer in the online book-selling scene in terms of popularity. Still, it has cemented itself as a great place to buy and sell books, including textbooks.
If the company name did not already give it away, AbeBooks is a website dedicated to buying and selling books, unlike larger reselling sites like eBay or Amazon. This is a bonus because customers are actively searching for your products: books!
The website is a bit confusing but thorough, as it classifies books in many different ways, including condition, binding type, genre, and collection attributes. Unfortunately, AbeBooks does not have an app.
BooksRun is one of the best sites to sell college textbooks. You can buy, sell, or even rent used and new textbooks through them. They usually offer great deals for used books, however, from our experience their support team takes some time to reach back out via email.
Even though Amazon closed its trade-in program, Amazon is still an ideal platform if you are looking to sell either college textbooks, rare books, or flip books for profit. If you can get good deals on used books at local bookshops, you may resell them on Amazon and keep the difference.
TextbookRush is another good website to sell your textbooks and they offer fast free shipping via FedEx which takes up to 5 days. According to their website, if you ship via FedEx and select Paypal, you should get your quoted money within 6 days total.
There are many organizations that are always looking for books, or you can drop off a book in a local Little Free Library. Or, donate your books to prisons. If none of these is an option, we have a few ideas for how to repurpose your used books.
The website is easy to use and well-organized. You can find both new and used books there, as well as various pieces of software, CDs, and DVDs. To help you choose wisely, under "Staff Picks" you can find various recommendations to help you decide which books to read next, including some picks of the month, and bucket list books. Powell's also provides a way for you to sell your own books online and in-store.
Powell's is especially notable for regularly offering unique editions of books signed by authors. However, be sure to keep an eye on shipping costs. They are more expensive than some of their competitors.
The company's return policy is also surprisingly strict; you cannot get a refund on orders for books in quantities of 10 or more (of the same title), nor on opened games, DVDs, or books that come with electronic media.
Books-A-Million (BAM) started life way back in 1917 in Alabama. It is now the second-largest book retailer in the United States and is one of the best places to buy books. It has physical stores, and in recent years, has also become an online bookseller.
This online bookstore operates only through third-party booksellers. That means that when you buy a book from Alibris, you're buying it from an independent bookstore. This makes the platform perfect for those who are looking for used, rare, or collectible titles such as first editions, antiquarian titles, and signed copies.
Peachpit is a Pearson brand that specializes in selling books, ebooks, and other educational materials to those in creative professions. You'll find a wide range of photography-related titles, everything you need to get started with Adobe Photoshop, academic resources for web design and development, and video-making guides.
This bookstore doesn't just focus on printed books but offers online courses and digital materials for on-the-go learners. The website even hosts a blog where you can find the community members' insights about using software and gadgets and embracing a digital lifestyle.
If you are looking for a bookseller that is not Amazon, Barnes & Noble is a solid bet. Barnes & Noble is one of the largest online book retailers, with more than five million titles to choose from and hundreds of physical bookstores. It's also one of the best online bookstores that isn't Amazon.
You should check out Barnes and Noble if you're looking to buy a lot of items at once without overpaying for shipping; it's free once you meet the minimum order threshold of $35. And if you're not satisfied you have 14 days to return your books.
The website also offers book rentals at an even lower cost, as well as buybacks. The two features simultaneously allow you to save money and for the company to grow its inventory of rentable books for other users.
BetterWorldBooks isn't just a bookstore, but also a charity with a mission to change the world by improving literacy worldwide. Aside from buying and selling books, the company accepts book donations so it can either reuse them in global literacy initiatives or recycle them.
There's plenty of choice in both new and used book categories, searchable by genre. You'll find many of the best new books to read as well as the classics. The company also offers free shipping and a flexible return policy (though keep in mind that refunds might take up to 60 days to clear into your account).
Indeed, the company is the world's largest independent bookseller. Every used book in the site's inventory is hand-graded so you'll have a precise understanding of the quality of the book before you hit the buy button.
The selection of books on ThirftBooks is impressive. In part, that's down to the large number of users who donate books. However, it is mostly due to the company's relationship with libraries. They send lots of ex-library books to ThirftBooks which it then passes onto the consumer at rock bottom prices.
Bookshop.org is trying to take on Amazon by supporting local and independent booksellers. It offers several tools to this end, including a map of local stores that let you direct 100 percent of the profit to a particular outlet, as well as an affiliate program that gives 10 percent of profit to participation shops. And better yet, 75 percent of all profit goes to stores, publications, and authors in the wider book community.
Our final recommendation for where to buy books besides Amazon is Biblio. It specializes in used, rare, and out-of-print books from independent booksellers, meaning the titles you will find on Biblio are very unlikely to pop up on Amazon's bookstore.
Although all of the online bookstores mentioned above have their advantages, Amazon is still one of the best-known names in the industry. Its website is extremely user-friendly, it ships internationally, it has an extensive selection of books of all types, and it makes it easy to find a particular book in no time.
At the same time, more and more people are trying to avoid using Amazon, switching to using smaller, potentially more ethical, companies. We're not going to tell you which approach is the right one; just make sure you find an online bookstore that meets your needs.
It can be a little harder to find them online, especially when you can't see pictures and have to worry about things like quality. So, here's a guide to five of the best websites you can use to source your second-hand books, and how to ensure you're getting exactly what you want.
eBay has absolutely got to be the first port of call for anyone looking to purchase second-hand books. It has a vast range of titles, especially for those which are more popular, and you can often find them cheaper on here than elsewhere. Also, you're very likely to be familiar with how it works already, including checking seller ratings and sorting by price.
In general, there should be enough sellers on eBay offering the books at a fixed price that you don't need to resort to bidding. Bantam Books and CMedia are two of the best known sellers on there, but there are a whole host of others.
Also, try not to set your heart on specific covers. When collecting a series, many people are keen on ensuring the spines are all lovely and matching, but trying to get the cover you want requires matching bibliographic data for specific editions (and even then, it doesn't always work). You may not care so much about this, but it's certainly something to consider if all the other books you own in a series are from a specific print run.
One of the most popular second-hand books sites out there, AbeBooks, is dedicated to matching sellers with buyers. It can occasionally be pricier than eBay, so it's always good to compare first, but it has a nicer user interface.
AbeBooks has a particularly good focus on textbooks and rare or collectible books. While we don't imagine that many of you are looking to purchase a first edition of EM Forster's Passage to India, which recently went for over $18,000, you can find plenty of signed books on here.
ThriftBooks is especially fantastic for getting a great deal on books that are no longer in print, and might be ridiculously expensive elsewhere. This is all because of its excellent email-notification setup.
If you sign up to be notified when a book you want is in stock, you'll be emailed instantly as soon as it's added to the site. This way, you'll often be able to snap up cheaper copies of books which might be more expensive elsewhere, so we can't recommend the site enough when looking for a rarer book. 041b061a72