By Staff

Buying and selling textbooks is a nightmare for the typical college kid. The average cost of one semester’s worth of books is $300 – 400. And when it comes to selling them back, a school’s buyback program will accept the book for only a fraction of the cost, and that’s if they will take it back at all. For those of you who are willing to try and skate through class without the book, good luck. But what if you could turn this lose – lose situation into a money-making monster by purchasing books from students for more than what the bookstore would pay, and then turning around and selling the books to other students for less than the bookstore charges?

            You’ll have to start out by doing some homework first:

• Find out in advance if any professors are using a new or different book version (you don’t want to buy a book from students if other students aren’t going to need it)
• Ask around using the social media network of your choice (facebook, twitter, craigslist, etc) to find out if anyone at your school is interested in buying or selling their books
• Find out the prices of certain books at the bookstore so that you can charge less for the books you sell. Also find out the buyback amount so you can give your customers more money for their books than the bookstore can
• Advertise yourself around campus; use flyers, send out e-mails, you get the gist…