The Secret to Making A Profit Selling Back Your Textbooks

Making a profit selling back textbooks … That’s unheard of, right?

I mean … if we’re lucky, the campus bookstore will pay us $5 for a $120 textbook, and if we’re extra lucky, we might get $20 for it from a friend who needs it desperately. But that’s still $100 spent on a single textbook that we opened maybe 5 times throughout the whole semester . . .

Well, friends, I’m here to tell you that you can actually make a profit selling back your textbooks with TUN’s Textbook Save Engine — if you do it right.

Don’t believe me? See below for PROOF and get ready to do some MATH with me. 😉

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PROOF #1

Let’s look at one of the most popular (heavily demanded and searched) textbooks on TUN, Understanding Nutrition (13th Edition).

Disclaimer: Because textbook prices change all the time, the price (and the seller) may be different when you search it (say now, as you are reading this), but at the time of my search, the cheapest option, or the best bet, was to buy it used for $18.02, from Amazon, as you see below.

$18.02 for a textbook that originally costs $280.95? Not bad (AT ALL)!!!

➫ But you know what’s even better?

ECampus happens to be buying the used textbook for $19.24 (see below), which means that you would actually be making a profit of $0.22 if you were to buy it from Amazon and then sell it to ECampus!

Awesome, isn’t it?

You’ve essentially paid nothing for your textbook and earned some extra cents to put into your piggy bank!

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PROOF #2

Let’s now take a look at Business Law: Text and Cases, another popular textbook on our Textbook Save Engine.

Here we see that the best option for this textbook is to rent it for $54.48.

$54.48 for a textbook that originally costs $334.99! Awesomeee!

STOP here for a moment.

Yes, this is indeed an awesome deal already, but if you’re really serious about saving some money …

you would go an extra step and find out how much you could sell the textbook back for, if you were to buy it rather than rent it.

From the screenshot above, we see that buying the used textbook from Amazon will cost $172.21, which sounds like a lot (and it is) but … the below screenshot shows us that ECampus is buying the used textbook for $136.50!

➠ Here’s the catch, if you missed it:

If you buy the used textbook from Amazon for $172.21 (instead of renting it from Chegg for $54.48) and then sell it to ECampus for $136.50, you’d only be paying $35.71 for your textbook, saving an extra $18.77.

Still confused? Let me draw it out for you:

Whether you rent the textbook (in which case you would have to return it), or buy it and then sell it, the end result is the same – you would not have the textbook in your possession.

However, for this specific textbook (and for many others), buying it and then selling it, rather than renting it, proves to be a better option.

➸ The takeaway? Good deals (at first sight) aren’t always the best deals. Go the extra step to save even more.

Indeed, the extra effort will be well worth it – it will save you a LOT of money if you do this for all your textbooks, every semester.

Play smart and save smart, my friends. Use TUN’s Textbook Save Engine.

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