You’re heading back to school and the semester starts soon (if it hasn’t already for you) so that means time for the textbook buying ritual.  The cost of buying textbooks goes up every year and it’s a major part of the financial formula when paying for school, on average a student pays $900 a year on books and about $4,000 over the span of an undergrad degree.  Despite this expense, surveys indicate few students shop for books online or look for better deals outside of the on campus bookstores.  By hunting for used books or better deals online, students can save up to nearly 50%.

Buying Used Textbooks for cheap on Amazon

One such place to score some deals right is Amazon.com.  Amazon is pushing into the new and used textbook market in a big way this year and offering students a way to easily buy or sell used books online.  They’ve got a new textbook search tool setup on the site where you can just punch in things such as title, author name, or ISBN# to find a book.

As an example of a book you can get much cheaper by purchasing used, the widely required “Biology” 7th edition textbook written by Cambpell and Reece is available used for $34.95 used on Amazon.com, whereas the same book new costs $117.11 from Amazon and $132.21 at Barnes & Noble.  To add further savings to buying in a bookstore on campus, when you buy online in most states there are no sales taxes.  Amazon also has an offer right now for getting Free Amazon Prime shipping for 3 months.  Being a member of Amazon Prime means 2-day shipping is free of charge on any books or other products you buy from Amazon.  The offer requires that you buy over $100 work of books to get this deal, which you’ll doubtless do for any one semester.  During the three month trial period you can cancel at anytime, no charges incurred, but after three months is reached you’ll get charged $79 (the annual fee for Amazon Prime).

Selling Used Textbooks on Amazon

Looking to sell used textbooks?  Amazon has you covered there with a new and unique program called EasySell.  With EasySell you can ship any media items, including textbooks, CDs, DVDs and video games, off to Amazon.com in a box and then they’ll store the stuff for you and sell it on your behalf.  You don’t have to run to the post office every time you sell an item, Amazon will take care of shipping and order fulfillment for you.  Registration for EasySell is free and there’s no monthly subscription fee. You won’t be charged for fulfillment until your items sell, and storage is free for the first 60 days.  After 60 days the following costs will be incurred for a box of items you have in storage at Amazon:

The down side is that Amazon will skim a number of fees off of each book you sell.  They take $1.35 variable closing fee + $0.99 set fee + 15% commission on the final sale amount (so if it’s a $20 book then $3).   Those fees really add up, so you really have to make sure you couldn’t score a better selling price elsewhere.  Walking down to your local used bookstore and unloading books might still be an easier way to get cash fast, but this EasySell option from Amazon is still worth keeping in mind as way to unload old textbooks, CDs, DVDs or games for some moola.