When it comes to selling your books back at the end of the semester, some may settle for the bookstores low low price because they don’t want to worry about it any longer. But for those of you who are willing to search around and find the highest price, Bookscouter.com is the place to go.

For instance, lets do a test. We are going to use the UGA bookstore and Bookscouter.com to get the buyback prices for six Psychology books. With this data we see that selling your books at Bookscouter.com can give you 200 dollars more than going to your local bookstores.

Our Historic Buyback Price tool allows you to analyze past book prices. This tool can be used to understand pricing trends for a given book or collection of books. It can assist you in determining the best time to sell your book(s). Here are a few examples:

• Using the Historic Buyback Price tool we find that Single Variable Calculus (0495559725) sold for $78.38 in May of 2009, in May of 2010 it sells for $82.13. So according to this, May seems to be the highest selling point for this book.
• The average price for Conceptual Physics (0321548094) at its highest was $32.40, but it is now only $15.61. This may be one of those books that you would want to hold for a while to see if the price will go back up.

Hopefully this quick introduction has given you some insight into the power of the Historic Buyback Price tool . It should allow you to maximize your selling prices and help you earn more money. If you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to comment!

Online book rental companies are a new alternative for college students in need of textbooks. So the question is, “Is it better to buy or rent?” It really depends on each individuals situation and preference. If you’re the type of person that buys your book at full price and never gets around to selling it, then renting textbooks is definitely for you. But, if you shop around for the best deal, when purchasing a book and then use a site like Bookscouter to sell it back then buying textbooks is the way to go.

Let’s do a case study, I’m going to pretend that I have to buy Molecular Cell Biology (9780716776017), which retails at $131.67. First I am going to find the lowest price I can rent it for at Textbookrenter. Then I am going to see how much I can buy it for at Campusbooks. After that,  I am going find out how much I can sell it for here at Bookscouter. The new historic buyback feature can show you that the price of that book has slowly gone down over time, but today (April 29th) it seems to have jumped back up a bit.

The lowest rental price was $42.21 from Campusbookrentals.com. The lowest buying price was $57.49 from Amazon.com. The highest selling price was $47.12 from Firstclassbooks.com. So if I rented the book it would have cost me a total of $42.21. If I bought the book and sold it, it would cost me a total of $10.37.

The benefit of renting is that you don’t have to worry if all of the sudden the author comes out with a new edition and your book becomes unwanted. Renting also is usually more convenient then buying and selling which saves time.  But at the end of the day if you are willing to buy and sell your books, you will usually end up with a few more dollars in your pockets then if you rented.