The Green Frugal

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To make money selling books online, there are two major options: do it yourself, or sell to an online buyback company. Below are the ins and outs of selling your used books yourself one-by-one, versus selling used books to Cash4Books all at once.

Selling Books Yourself one-by-one:

• Selling your books individually generally nets you more money.  Although most websites will charge you at least a 15% commission fee, which will significantly cut into your profits.
• You must spend your time creating a listing for each of your books. This includes condition, comments, and price of each of the books you are selling.
• You will need to monitor your listing.  This means you must wait for the books to sell and you will need to constantly reprice your books so that the prices are competitive. And after all this, there is no guarantee your books will sell.
• After your book sells you will need to find, package, and ship each book to each individual customers.  You will need to repeat this step each time a different book sells.  This may mean multiple trips to the post office.
• You will need to provide the customer service to the individual customers that purchased your books.   This can mean multiple emails, like:  “Did you ship my book?”  ”Where is my tracking number?” “I want to return the book.” “My book is different than described.” “I want a refund”.

Selling Books to Cash4Books:

• You will know in advance how much money you will receive for your books. And, there are no fees for selling your books to Cash4Books.
• You will receive the money that was quoted to you.  We publish our condition requirements for you to read in advance so you know what to expect.
• We provide you with a prepaid shipping label directly on our website.  Or, if you need one sent, we will mail one to you free of charge.
• You can sell us all your books at once, saving the time and materials it takes to package your books individually.  Just one trip to the post office or FedEx location of your choice.
• Payment for your books is sent within ONE business day after we receive and process your books.  Whether you opt for Paypal or check–our payment process is fast!
• We keep you informed about your shipment every step of the way with email notifications: approved for shipment, received, and paid.
• Need more cash for your books? Sign up for our mailing list, and you will receive monthly promotional offers to get more for your used books (sign up form is in the right column).
• Selling to Cash4Books saves you time. What is your time worth?

We sometimes get the question of why our quotes are lower than used book retail prices (the prices you could roughly get if you sold the books yourself).  We are not able to quote at retail because the company has expenses to pay for.  These expenses include postage inbound, computer software, marketing, rent for a 23,000 sq ft building, utilities, payroll and benefits, and more.

Cash4Books offers value, first and foremost, as a convenient and time saving service. Secondly, we offer value as a quality service with an exception customer care team. We recognize that people live busy lifestyles, and Cash4Books is meant as a one stop shop for selling used books and textbooks online with a great experience.  However, if you have the time to try selling books yourself, that can be a great option as well.

It is also important to note that we do not buy everything.  In fact, we are sometimes criticized for how picky we are in what we buy. This is generally due to the laws of supply and demand, our current on-hand quantity, and the used book retail value of a book at any given time.

Thank you for stopping by our blog, and we hope you check us out and sell some books!

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Don’t get ripped off by the college bookstore ever again. Sell textbooks online! Cash4Books.net offers an easy and convenient textbook buyback service. Simply type the ISBN numbers off the back of your textbooks into our site to receive free and instant price quotes. Your textbooks ship for free with our prepaid mailing labels. Once the textbooks arrive, we issue payment promptly through your choice of PayPal or check.

Even more, we have an iPhone barcode scanner, as well as an Android barcode scanner, for some quick price checks.  With our easy to use apps, you can quickly sell your textbooks right from your smart phone.

A reliable and trusted buyer of college textbooks since 2004, Cash4Books.net has purchased over 1.6 million books from 250,000 customers. Located in Beaverton, Oregon, we are a family-owned business with 40 employees. Read more about us here, and some media coverage (which includes  a mention on the CBS Early Show, the Dr. Phil show, and the Yahoo! Shine blog).

Most Frequent Textbook Buybacks for August 2011

Here is our list of the textbooks that came in to Cash4Books most often in August 2011, and the average prices paid. These textbooks and prices are provided for example only, and are subject to change:

1. Fundamentals of Nursing
   We paid: $34.12
   
2. Elementary Statistics (11th Edition)
   We paid: $32.62
   
3. Psychology
   We paid: $39.46
   
4. Biology
   We paid: $32.39
   
5. Understanding Business
   We paid: $40.20
   
6. Conceptual Physics
   We paid: $33.87
   
7. World of Art, A (6th Edition)
   We paid: $46.73
   
8. Statistics for Business and Economics
   We paid: $58.74
   
9. Understanding Basic Statistics
   We paid: $30.41
   
10. Psychology in Action
    We paid: $28.62
    

Sell textbooks online in three easy steps:

1. Enter textbooks to sell

2. Ship for FREE

3. Get paid

Visit the Cash4Books.net homepage and start selling your textbooks today!

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In a Cash4Books team meeting, we reviewed ways that we felt set us apart as a company.  Ways that add value to the process of selling your used books, and ways that differentiate us.  Here is the list we arrived at:

1. No Paypal fees are charged to customers selling their books. Normally PayPal charges 2.9% plus $0.30 to receive money.  However, Cash4Books will pay the fee, so our customers get 100% of the money quoted to them!
2. Checks are issued every weekday.  Every morning, 5 days a week, checks are printed, stuffed and mailed with TLC to Cash4Books customers.
3. Paypal payments are issued within 1 business day of books getting processed.
4. We immediately communicate to our customers exactly why we have rejected an item if it is not accepted.
5. We take pictures of books and boxes, and post to the customer’s account.  If, for example, the Post Office damages a package in the mail to our warehouse (we hate to see this happen, but it does once in a while).
6. Customers have an account where they can sign in and review the status of a shipment at any time.
7. No Partial deductions for customers’ books. We pay what is quoted or we don’t accept at all.  See our condition requirements.
8. We email our customers as soon as possible if part of a shipment is missing.
9. We price match against legitimate competitors that carry a grade of A or B with the Better Business Bureau.
10. We reissue checks to customers for FREE after a reasonable waiting period.  This happens when “my dog ate my check”, or  when “my check went through the washing machine”.  Or, sometimes checks just get lost for no known reason at all!
11. Books are processed within 1 business day after receiving them.
12. We offer to return books for free to 1st time customers if there is a problem with the condition (our risk-free guarantee).
13. Our customers get a live person when they call (5 days a week). Our awesome Customer Care Team is standing by: 1-877-243-5935.
14. We will mail label requests. No printer?  Not a problem.  We will snail mail pre-paid shipping labels to the customer’s address.
15. We process Cash4Books walk in transactions at McKenzie Books, Inc. in Beaverton, Oregon without an appointment, and we even add a credit since we didn’t have to pay the shipping.
16. We have a FedEx option for shipping high dollar books.  Some higher dollar shipments of books will automatically qualify for FedEx.
17. No hassle returns.  Occasionally some books are not accepted after we review their condition and compare with our condition requirements.  These books can be returned within 30 days upon request.
18. A very low minimum order is required.  We don’t use high minimums because we want our customers to try us out and know that we are legit.  Just send us a book or two.  If you like the process, then sell your whole library! Sell, sell, sell!

Here is the great team that makes all these things happen:

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As an Oregon State University student from 1999 – 2003, I must admit that I didn’t know much about how to save money in college.  I wasted a LOT of money on my college textbooks.  For example, I initially just assumed that I needed to buy all my books from the college bookstore.  Wow, was I wrong! But, you don’t have to make the same mistakes that I did, and waste all of the money that I did!  Here are some great tips to lower the cost of college textbooks:

1. Once you register for classes, your college should give you a list of ISBNs for the books required for your classes.  Get your ISBN list as soon as possible to start shopping. The longer you wait until the start of the semester/term, the higher the prices will be.
2. Buy used. There is a lot of hype right now around textbook rentals and e-books.  But, as the example at the bottom of this post shows, it is almost always better to buy used and then sell it back at the optimal time of year (see #7).
3. Only buy used textbooks from sellers with great feedback. Look for sellers in the online marketplaces with at least 95% positive feedback, but preferably 98-99% positive.  The seller should also have at least 500 feedback ratings over the past year, to ensure they are reputable.
4. Buy from a company or seller in your state, or in a nearby state.  Most used textbook sellers will use standard “media mail” to ship your book.  That can take 14-21 days when shipping from the east coast to the west coast, for example.  Buy from your state, or a nearby state, to minimize this risk and receive your books in 4-6 days versus 2-3 weeks.
5. Buy from sellers that take the time to describe the textbook’s condition in detail.  You may need to know if the textbook comes with a CD or DVD, for example.  Not all sellers will indicate this, except the great ones like MKZbooks.com. Okay, as the owner of McKenzie Books, I might be a bit biased but seriously the quality and detail of a book’s description is indicative of the quality and care of the seller.
6. Ask your professor if it is OK to use the old edition of the textbook.  Many times it is, and if you can use the old edition, this can save you a HUGE amount of money!  When you register for classes, many colleges will provide the email address of the professor.  Send an email–it doesn’t hurt to ask!
7. Sell your textbooks back in August or January to a reputable buyback company.  The reason you want to wait until August or January is because that is when the highest demand to BUY textbooks will be.  And, where there is high demand, there is high buyback prices for you to sell!

We here at Cash4Books.net always aim to please our customers with our textbook buyback service. We offer free FedEx shipping on most textbook buybacks, no PayPal fees, no minimums, a convenient and free iPhone App, lightening fast payment processing, and excellent customer service (a live person will actually answer the phone, unlike other companies).  You can also sell your other used books back to Cash4Books at the same time you sell your textbooks!

To expand on #2, above: In a recent study that I performed, the textbook Psychology by David G. Myers (ISBN 9781429215978), was on average $79.46 to buy used, $73.14 as an e-book and only $58.49 to rent. However, selling back the book for an average of $45.61 meant that the total cost of ownership was only $33.85 for those students who bought and resold the book. That’s a whopping $24.64 cheaper than renting, and $39.29 cheaper than the e-book.

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UPDATE: We have finished collecting videos for the time being. Thank you to everyone who submitted a video!

We are collecting video of our customers answering this question in 30 seconds or less.

Here is how it works:

1. You record a video using the camera on your laptop or a web cam.
2. In the video, start by saying, “What I like most about Cash4Books is….” Fill in the blank with something interesting and something that will help build trust for our brand. Possible examples: ease of use, convenience, fast payment, customer service, other?  You could also share your overall experience with selling to Cash4Books.
3. On approval of your video, the video is combined with other short customer videos.
4. The combined and longer video of 10 or more customers will be posted on our Cash4Books.net homepage for the world to see.

Click this button to get started:

Become a Cash4Books Movie Star!

Here are some examples of what our customers have said:

More details:

• No one will be publicly “commenting” on your video or rating it in any way.
• You will be able re-record videos as many times as you wish (if you don’t like how the first one turned out).
• Please share the link above with your friends that have also used Cash4Books.