have you ever sold to half price books?

jenn1981 · August 2011

haha- can you tell I'm cleaning out the room we're gonna use for the nursery with these posts

What can I expect to get from selling back books? I have a lot of novels, most within the past 5-6 years or so. Is it worth it to sell them or else donate to the library or any other ideas? Do they buy college textbooks? What about books in a different language? Thanks for any insight!

dori851 · August 2011

I sold about 60 books to Half Price Books & only got $10. They were all in good shape, some children's books, some novels. I was so not happy with the amount they give you for your books. Now, this was about 3 years ago, so I'm not sure if anything there has changed, but I haven't taken any there since then. I always donate them now. I'm not sure if they buy college textbooks or books in a different language, sorry! Good luck!

katieranck2202 · August 2011

They don't give much for books if you ask me. I would rather use Paperbackswap.com or donate them if you just want them out of the house.

jenn1981 · August 2011

thank you!

hav2run · August 2011

I have sold many books on half.com, which is owned and run by ebay. I have always had good transactions. The bummer is having to ship everything, so you have to price accordingly. Media mail is cheap.

mtinsley · August 2011

HPB is a great place to sell back books, but just know that you will not get nearly the amount back as what you paid for them. They will buy textbooks and books in other languages. For the textbooks, I've also had great success on half.com, especially if you have the current edition. But the hassle of shipping might not be worth it. I've found that taking used books to HPB to be just as easy as donating them. They can also give you in store credit, so you can turn around and purchase some great children's books. If you did feel particularly connected to any of your books, you could donate to the library and designate them to be assigned to your local branch so you could easily find them again (at least this can be done at the Cincy public library).

okayitskristin · August 2011

I just recently took a large tub of old cookbooks (that belonged to my mom, most bought AT half price books, some with the tag still on) and three textbooks (one that I had seen on the shelf recently being sold for $25 but none were worth anything to sell back online). They gave me $2. And were not even very polite. I was just happy to get rid of them but wished I had donated them. It wasn't worth the $2 to have them be rude to me.

In the past I've sold textbooks online and at one point I found a site that took regular books, too, but I don't remember what it was. Sorry.

jenn1981 · August 2011

OMG TWO dollars!!?? wow. that's crazy. yeah i think i will just donate all the novels to my library. they have a box in the lobby area. and then i was thinking of emailing a few of the local colleges to see if they would take at least the german novels for their library in the foreign lang dept. thank you all!

Christine.Louie · August 2011

Hm we've sold novels, textbooks (realllly old), and even magazines to HPB and felt it was pretty reasonable and the people were never rude. One time we went with about 10 books and a handful of magazines and got like $20+. I feel like when you go in there with fewer items on multiple trips instead of one big load they give you a bigger offer.

Net, they basically look up the ISBN to see what inventory exists and how much they think they can sell it for then back it up to what they offer you.

For textbooks that are maybe 1-2 years old I recommend half.com or even check out the local college bookstores. At the end of the quarter they usually offer a bonus for buy-backs because they're trying to stock popular used books for the next quarter.

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