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Posted June 6, 2014

Student Saving Tip: Sell Your Old Books

We've all been there; half-way through the postgrad year, money is running low, bills are piling up, your supervisor's extension is drawing to a close, the parents have been drained of every ounce of patience and generosity, and the landlord is due at any moment. What's more, you've tried every trick in the book to conjure up some money, and your once everflowing stream of ideas has all but dried up.


You've undoubtedly browsed this blog from top to bottom looking for the optimum skint solution. Some posts may have been helpful, like the one on freecycling . Others were probably things you had already done some time ago, like giving up on the gym membership, saying goodbye to your favourite labels and choosing to drink less. You can appreciate the truth behind those words and you know that they are 100 percent relevant, but that ship has sailed. You are beyond the 'saving' stage, because there's nothing left to save. It's been months that you've been eating your home-made meals made of home-grown veggies with your house-ridden flatmates who are just as skint as you. You need to earn something. You're looking for a band-aid solution.

There are quite a few ways to earn money , and the obvious first choice is to find a job. But if you can't find one in the blink of an eye, you don't have the time to work, or you would simply like to wait it out until the employer of your dreams makes it worthwhile for you to drop everything for a career, then you, my fellow postgrad, have got yourself in quite a predicament. You want a quick part-time job, but you don't have that option.

Well, wake up and smell the roses. And by roses, I mean books; your old textbooks. Cheer up and ditch them! They're bound to find a mindful owner who will put them to good use. And since your broadband is the only subscription you couldn't bring yourself to put out of its misery, you may as well use that, too. You have so many options to sell your books online, that's it's a wonder you haven't tried it before.

Take Amazon, for instance. Enter your book's ISBN (the one under the barcode, at the back) in the search field, or the title, author, format and edition and -voila!- you're one step closer to a bit of extra cash. You have three options with Amazon: list it for sale and keep it until you do, send it off to an Amazon warehouse for them to keep and send to the customer (if the book is expensive and you'd rather use Amazon's good name to sell it quickly), or trade it in for a gift card which can be used to buy something else from them.

There's always the option of trying AbeBooks' buyback option, since they've been in business for almost two decades and have a pretty straightforward process. Of course, you could always try a website dedicated to textbook buybacks, like WeBuyBooks.co.uk, but you won't be able to take advantage of the service guarantees that established book traders can provide.

You could also try younger coursemates who'll be looking to pick up the books in the next year or two – what better way than to earn some money than by helping a fellow student in the process?

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