Sell Textbooks Online And Class Notes: How To Do It
Sell textbooks online to generate a little extra income for yourself this school year. Heck, don’t just stop at the text books, sell your notes from class, too!
There are a handful of ways to make money online by selling textbooks and notes. You need to make sure you were paying attention for the notes and they are actually decent.
The books you sell can’t be all tattered and ruined. You can only sell paper, no shooting and editing videos of class lectures or selling audio recordings.
Let’s get into the first few steps.
1. Where To Sell Textbooks Online
You can sell textbooks online at a number of different websites. Consider big ones like Amazon or Ebay. Or, look at smaller sites that specialize like Book Scouter or Sell Back Your Books.
If you want to sell notes that you took in class, check out Stuvia for that. They are the leading company for exchanging class notes (and might actually be the only one). Seriously, you’d think there would be more websites for selling notes considering how many college textbook buyback companies there are.
Some of the benefits of going to sell textbooks online with Amazon or Ebay are that you won’t just be limited to books. You can start with your books from class and then move on to other things.
That old Xbox that you don’t touch anymore (because you got a series X) is a perfect candidate. There are thousands of different things that you can sell on those marketplaces, it’s nuts! There’s probably a lot more money laying around your college house (or old bedroom at home) than you realize.
2. The Conditions
Whatever you sell, be it books, notes, or otherwise, they will probably have varying degrees of wear and tear. You need to be able to describe the conditions of books in significant detail for your listings. Here are examples of descriptions of similar books that have listings on Amazon and eBay.
The Amazon CPA review book (from a 96% positively rated seller):
“Used but good condition with minimal marks, stains, scratches, stickers or other cosmetic blemishes. No obvious missing pages. Minimal Corner damage or writing in or on book. Ancillary components and Product Codes/Key are not usually included with used books and are not guaranteed to be valid. We ship standard orders within 24 hours (Monday-Friday) via USPS Media Mail.”
That’s someone that knows how to sell textbooks online! As you can see from that, they also mention information about their shipping time and additional components to the book besides its actual condition.
The eBay CPA review book (from a 98.6% positively rated seller):
“Acceptable: A book with obvious wear. May have some damage to the cover but integrity still intact. The binding may be slightly damaged but integrity is still intact. Possible writing in margins, possible underlining and highlighting of text, but no missing pages or anything that would compromise the legibility or understanding of the text. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections.”
This description above is a canned one from eBay, however, the only additional description from the seller is “There are some writing on some pages.” Both Amazon and eBay have guides detailing the different book conditions and what different things mean.
3. Selling Notes And Their Conditions
If you don’t want to sell textbooks online and just want to stick with your notes, those will need to be in certain conditions, too.
Ideally, they will be well-written, legible, and not direct copies from text books. You could run into copyright problems if you just re-write textbooks (better to sell textbooks online).
When you upload notes to Stuvia, you will need to list your college and the course. In addition to that, describe the documents.
According to the site, the average earnings are $103 per month and about $8.90 per document sold. You can even set the prices for your documents, with the minimum being about $2.50. Since this is a European company, the monetary amounts that they list (on the American version of the site) are in Euros so that’s the reason for saying “about.”
Sell Textbooks and Notes Online: Final Thoughts
Selling your class notes and textbooks online can be an awesome way to make extra money in college. If you have textbooks, good handwriting, and are attentive, you could cash in on both. They may not cover all of your student loans, but they may be able to get one or a few payments taken care of here and there. Check out the websites listed and see what you can sell!