As the end of the semester approaches, so do thoughts of selling back books for some extra spending cash.
Students can sell their current textbooks to the Texas A&M University-Commerce Bookstore and also the East Texas Bookstore.
According to the A&M-C bookstore Web site, books can be bought back at any point in the semester. The price offered varies on the demand for the book on campus, as well as nationally, and the book’s current condition.
The bookstore will pay up to one-half of the purchase price for books in good condition, which are needed for sale in the upcoming semester. Other books that have a national demand can be bought at the national buying guide price. The policy for the East Texas Bookstore is the same because both are parented by the Texas Book Company based out of Greenville. Students need to be sure to bring their student identification cards to receive cash for their books.
At the end of the term, faculty give the bookstores their adoption, or what texts they will use next semester, in order to decide what value books can be purchased, Lisa Richardson, manager of the on-campus bookstore, said. Books that can be used again from previous terms are valued at half of what they were purchased for, and books that are not being used are sold back for the market value of the book.
“The best prices we can offer is the week before and the week of finals,” Richardson said.
According to Richardson, the on-campus store purchases 70 percent of the total books bought back at the end of the semester while the off-campus store purchases 30 percent. Because more traffic and business goes through the Memorial Student Center, the on-campus store purchases more.
Students can sell back their books at any point in the semester, however, before the bookstore receives the adoption information from faculty, students can only receive the market value for the book. Only a certain amount of books are bought back for half price depending on the next term’s enrollment figures for classes. Once that quota has been met the market value price is given, Richardson said.
“The quicker you bring them in, the better. Sometimes you get less, sometimes you get more,” John Pagliasotti, manager of the East Texas Bookstore, said.
The bookstores do not receive any profit when they buy back books for market value. This is a wholesale service they do in order to keep used books in circulation. However, the market value for a book can drop significantly when a new edition is released.
“There are some books that go dead. Sometimes the wholesale value becomes zero. It hurts everybody,” Pagliasotti said.