What to do with old college textbooks

watergirl Mar 31, 2010 17 Comments

Old College Text Books

Can anyone offer suggestions on what to do with old college text books? I’ve looked on a few buy-back websites and, of course, no one wants to buy them. Is there a textbook recycler?

I don’t feel right just throwing them in the garbage, especially since it’s my very expensive college education we’re talking about! Please let me know what you did in the comments below.
 

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17 Comments

Flex

about 15 years ago 

Thanks. I have the same problem. It feels too wasteful throw away a perfectly good book.

adam

about 15 years ago 

Outside of reference material, they are pretty much useless. With college instructors being enticed to use new editions every semester, 10+ year-old books are dinosaurs. This isn't that the information within is useless, just that no one will buy them / use them for class.

tamara

about 15 years ago 

If any of them are for Literature or English, I will take them off your hands.

watergirl

about 15 years ago 

Most are criminal justice, sociology, and physical therapy. I do have a few college writing...are you interested in those?

jest me

about 15 years ago 

Although I mostly agree with Adam above (that the newest editions will be the hottest commodities) you might try listing them on Amazon. You never know when someone might need what you've got.

hbh

about 15 years ago 

Freecycle.

Camila

about 15 years ago 

Be like me and trade them for books you want at paperbackswap.com.

natalie

about 15 years ago 

There are organizations that you can donate old texts to that then send them off to third-world counties that have struggling school/college systems. 

I'm not sure of any of the websites, but some of the local colleges may know. When i attended a few years back, LSC had donation boxes in different places around the campus.

Bad Cat!

about 15 years ago 

Better to donate to Goodwill or someplace similar, than to throw them away. Maybe someone who is considering a career in sociology would be willing to pay $.50 to see if they should pursue it further.

carrster

about 15 years ago 

Freecycle or Craigslist (for free)...?

carrster

about 15 years ago 

Or...if there's any interesting diagrams, drawings, photographs, etc...someone might be interested in buying them for arts/crafts projects through Etsy.

Lena

about 15 years ago 

You might still be able to get some money for them at campusbooks.com and if they have no cash value, Campus Books will tell you how/where to donate them. If you donate, you can take a tax write-off.

TimK

about 15 years ago 

There was a project in ReadyMade magazine (sometime within the last year?) that made furniture out of old encyclopedias.

bluenewt

about 15 years ago 

I posted a bag of writing textbooks on freecycle a few years ago and was amazed how many people wanted them. I love freecycle, although sometimes I worry that I'm contributing to somebody's hoarding disorder.

watergirl

about 15 years ago 

Thanks to everyone for your comments/suggestions. I found one website -- sellusedbooks.com -- that actually offered a reasonable amount of money for some of the books. As for the rest of the stack of books, I'm going to look into freecycle, etsy, and campusbooks.com.  Thanks again!

jeremy

about 15 years ago 

You could also try half.com I used to sell textbooks there.

J. S. Allen

about 15 years ago 

You can try selling them using bigwords.com Since it is a textbook search engine it searches lots of sites to find someone looking to buy your particular books. And if you can't find anyone looking to buy the titles you have then you can always donate them to the local library.

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