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by The Auction Rebel

Sometime in the next three days Amazon is going to be depositing $802.46 into my checking account. This money comes from the sale of used college textbooks I sold on Amazon between the 2nd and 15th of August.

Selling used college textbooks on Amazon can be a very lucrative sideline to your eBay business and they aren’t that hard to find. In most parts of the country garage sales and thrift shops are a good source of used college textbooks that you can turn around and sell on Amazon.

But, you need to know what to buy and what to pass on. Here’s how to get started and two simple tips so that you don’t get burned.

If you check out the books at garage sales or thrift shops, over time, you are going to see a lot of used college textbooks priced at $5 or less. Most of them aren’t worth buying, but some can quickly and easily be sold on Amazon for profits of $30 to $50 or more.

The four key flash points of a valuable textbook are:

1. It’s a college textbook. Some of the books you see will be either grade school or high school textbooks. Avoid these like the plague.

2. It’s the current edition. College textbooks are updated on a regular basis - usually every two or three years.

Check the copyright date. All textbooks will have a string of copyright dates - normally on the page back of the title page. If the most recent date is the current or previous year it’s probably worth buying.

Most companies update their textbooks every two or three years. If you take a closer look at the string of copyright dates you will see a definite pattern - they will normally be either two or three years apart.

This indicates how often a new edition of a text comes out. If the dates are all three years apart and the most recent year is 2003 it will probably be used for one more year and it’s worth buying. If the most recent year is 2003 but the dates are all two years apart there is probably a new edition being sold in campus bookstores and it’s probably not worth buying.

3. It’s complete. Many textbooks today are sold with one or more accompanying CDs. If the book originally came with a CD it should still be present to get the best price for it.

If the book originally had a CD there should be a CD envelope glued inside the back cover. You can also look on the book’s spine and it’s title or copyright page. If it originally had a CD it will be state so on one or more of those places.

I recommend not buying a textbook if the CD is missing. While you may be able to sell a textbook without it’s CD, it will take longer to sell it and the price you get will be much lower.

NOTE: Many recent textbooks came with a CD called InfoTrack. These are a generic guide to college information and resources on the Net and are usually missing. The fact that an InfoTrack CD is missing will not affect the value of the textbook. Just be sure the other one is present.

4. It’s not filled with highlighting or notes. A lot of notes or extensive highlighting on pages will greatly decrease the price you will get. I recommend you pass on any book with either of these.

Once you buy your first textbook you need to sell it. If you already have an Amazon seller account you know what you need to do. If you don’t, tomorrow I’ll walk you through setting one up.