TIPS, TRICKS, AND HOW TO’S
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Introduction
Overview
Why Books
Why Use BookScouter
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Get Familiar with the Site
Selling How To
Selling
Get to Know Vendors
Does the Book Condition Matter?
Other Issues with Book Conditions
Book Editions
Can I Sell Any Book?
Mobile App
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Keeping Up to Date
Social Media
Blog
Contact
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Where to Find Books
Find Books Online
Find Books Locally
Find Books at Auctions or Markets
Get Books from College Students
Dinero Books
How to Use Dinero Books
Pricing Algorithm
Adding Users
Working with Others: Employees & Buyers
Reports
Administrative Settings
Custom Prices
Branding
Price of Dinero Books
How to Set Up Shop
Putting It All Together
You Gotta Have Money to Make Money
How to Find Students Selling Books
Location, Location, Location
Be Safe!
Advertising Ideas
Selling Workflow
Boxes
Tools
Free Tools
Lookup Books Without ISBNs
Other Free Tools
Pro Tools
Bulk Lookup
Notifications
BookScouter Deals
Email Notifications
Advanced Tactics
Barcode Scanners
Peak Buyback Prices
Historic Buyback Price Lookup
Affiliate Programs
Conclusion
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OVERVIEW
As e-commerce sites have flourished within the last decade, online book selling has dominated
a large portion of this industry. Whether it is for selling books on hand or looking to make a
supplementary income, buying and selling books can bring in a major profit and is a great way
to earn a side or even full-time income for those looking to put in the work. BookScouter is a
site that simplifies the process of selling books online by curating vendors and prices to show
you the most money you can get for a book online. This guide is to show users the lay of the
land on BookScouter.com and details ways in which you can make a business by scouting and
reselling books.
WHY BOOKS?
There are plenty of ways to make money selling just about anything, so why choose books?
Primarily, books are nearly everywhere and are incredibly easy to source. Of all books, textbooks
will usually have the most value, and they can easily be found around the home, at thrift stores,
and through college students. The textbooks market is highly lucrative and full of customers
who will readily exchange their previous semester’s textbook for cold hard cash. Textbooks are
still mandatory to buy for nearly all students, and most only hold on to each book for 5 months
at a time. This means that students are constantly buying and reselling books. Print textbooks
are still vastly preferred by students over digital textbooks, ensuring that textbook arbitrage is a
business that will stay lucrative for several more years, even as we move into the digital age.
WHY USE BOOKSCOUTER?
One of the biggest benefits of using BookScouter is convenience--rather than spending hours
digging through countless buying and selling sites to find the best prices for your books, BookScouter combines all of this information for you on one simple page. All you have to do is enter
your book information, choose a vendor, and ship your book.
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The other huge reason to use BookScouter is that it allows you to quickly “flip” books for a
predictable and sustainable profit with a fixed amount of work. Many traditional book-selling
businesses rely on Amazon, eBay, and Half.com where you have to list a book for sale, store
the book, find and package it when it sells, then make daily trips to the post office to ship them
whenever they sell. Not to mention answering customer emails and repricing your books to
stay competitive, along with all kinds of other details that come when trying to do this at any
sort of scale.
When selling books on BookScouter, you can process the books once then package and ship
them off in bulk to the book-buying vendors. You’ll get completely paid for your books in 1-2
weeks at a pre-determined amount. No need to hold on to inventory, or rush to ship and get
packages to the post office every day.
Finally, because of its comprehensive list of vendors, BookScouter provides the easiest way to
compare prices from everybody at once. Many companies specialize in buying different kinds
of books, and BookScouter brings all of that information together so that you don’t have to
have specialized knowledge about which vendors buy which types. Simply scan or enter the
ISBN from any book, and the best place to sell that book is easily identified.
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GET FAMILIAR WITH THE SITE
Search Bar is where you can enter an ISBN number to sell a book. Our system will then
search the ISBN to find the best prices for your book. The search box is included
on every page of the site, and the cursor is automatically in that box on every
page, so you can begin typing or scan an ISBN barcode with a barcode scanner.
Navigation Bar contains the main pages of the site: home, vendors, tools, FAQ, blog, contact.
Buy Button is located on any of the price comparison pages and will send you over to the
actual company buying the book where you can complete your transaction.
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Check out the blog when you get to the
site for deals, promotions, tips, and more!
SELLING
HOW TO
We’re starting with the simplest step because using BookScouter should be just that: simple.
Selling your book is as easy as typing in your ISBN and committing to a vendor. Here, we outline
the steps to selling your books in great detail so that you feel certain every step of the way.
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Go to http://BookScouter.com/
In the main homepage, you can find the search bar at the center of your screen.
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Type in the ISBN of your book into the search bar and click “Sell”.
To find the ISBN number look at the barcode located on the back
of the book jacket, in the bottom right corner. The ISBN number
can be found at the top of the barcode or inside the cover page.
If you don’t have a book handy right now, you can copy and paste
one of the ISBNs listed under the “Recent Book Buyback Prices.”
ISBN 012-3-4567-8910-1
0
123456
789101
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Create a BookScouter account to unlock extra features
such as vendor customization and email subscription.
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You can now pick which vendor you would like to sell to.
Our simple Featured Vendor Box* located in the top right of the screen streamlines the
selling process by picking the best offer. It lists the company’s user rating, its average
shipping speed, and its payment options.
The featured vendor is mainly determined by the overall selling price but factors in an
array of other details to ensure that we display the best possible vendor (for more detail
on how we calculate our Featured Vendor Box, please see the blog post “BookScouter’s
Featured Vendor Box” on our website).
To see all available sellers, simply scroll down the page. The most reliable “Preferred”
vendors are listed by default. These preferred vendors are companies that have proven
to have a good reputation, and you can trust to get paid.
You can click the “Show More +” link at the bottom to repeat the search including other
vendors which may sometimes have a higher price, and will probably have not problems
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Try visiting our Vendors page before you make any selling or
purchasing decisions so you can see their user-submitted ratings.
completing a transaction, but are just a little less widely-used.
The page also lists each company’s user rating, average shipping speed, and payment
options. Textbook prices can change at any time, so if you see a price you like, grab it while
you can!
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Once you have decided on a vendor, click the orange “Sell” button next to its name.
This will take you to the vendor’s website.
From here, follow the directions that the vendor provides. Many vendors will require that
you create an account for their site. Most vendors will require you to input the condition of
your book. While it is unlikely, the expected resale value may vary from the original listed
price on BookScouter, depending on the condition of the book.
All transactions will be performed through the selected vendor’s website, so you will likely
be prompted to input shipping and banking information once you are on the site.
When done with the transaction on the vendor’s site, you will generally get an email with
details about the transaction. You’ll also generally receive a packing slip that needs to go
inside the box of books that you send to the vendor. You’ll also receive a postage label
that you place on the outside of your box that includes postage (pre-paid by the vendor)
for your package.
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Package up your books into a box
Find a box.
If you purchase items online, you have likely been shipped boxes
that are a perfect size for this. Scavenge around your house and
see if you can find a box. It’s okay if the box is slightly bigger than
your book, but you don’t want there to be too much empty space
for your book to rattle around. As you sell more and more books
online, you may need to buy boxes in bulk. We’ll go over this later
in the section called “Selling Workflow.”
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Place your book(s) into the box with the packing slip.
If your box is considerably larger than the book, you may want to
put in bubble wrap to ensure that the book doesn’t get damaged
in transit. You can buy bubble wrap in bulk online for cheap to
ensure your books arrive at the destination in the condition
you shipped them.
Make sure you have the correct packing slip with the
corresponding books. If the packing slip and the books don’t
match up, you may receive no payment for your books.
Seal the box with packing tape.
Make sure the box is well sealed to prevent any possible water
damage from ruining your books.
Tape the shipping label to the top of the box.
To avoid any damage to the shipping label, it’s a good idea to
tape the entire label down. If you start shipping in bulk you may
look into buying pre-made label slips from a shipping company
(UPS, Fedex, USPS) or just off Amazon. They are fairly inexpensive
and save time, effort, and tape.
Drop off your package.
All of the companies on BookScouter.com use one of the three major carriers in the
United States: USPS, UPS, or FedEx. You’ll need to bring your box of books to the carrier
and drop it off so that they can send the package off to the company that you selected.
Get Paid.
Depending on where your box was shipped, and what carrier was used, it can take
anywhere from about one to ten days to arrive. UPS and FedEx usually take three days
or less, while USPS can sometimes take up to 10 business days. Once your package has
arrived at the destination, it often takes another day for the company to open up your
package, verify the contents, and get a payment sent off to you. Payments via PayPal
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Rate vendors you’ve used to help other book
scouters buy and sell their books reliably!
show up the same day, and if you chose to get paid via check, the company will mail back
a check to you which can take a few more days to arrive.
Each vendor notifies you at different points during the receiving and payment process.
Some will email you at each step, and others will just send you one email once your payment has been issued.
GET TO KNOW VENDORS
Each of the companies on BookScouter has their own ways of reselling the books that they
buy. Many of them specialize in textbooks and have direct relationships with college
bookstores to sell the books that they acquire through their website. These companies tend to
have very competitive prices for textbooks during a couple of peak months during the year.
Other companies specialize in reselling books in their local geographic market, so they will buy
a broader selection of nearly anything year-round, but can be pickier about the condition of
the books they buy.
You can get a feel for each of the vendors by reading the reviews for each company on
http://bookscouter.com/vendors. After you’ve used the site for some time, you will get a feel
for which company will generally buy which kind of books. But these are not hard-and-fast
rules -- you’ll often be surprised.
You can leave your own reviews without creating an account, but we recommend you do! The
greatest advantage that creating an account offers is the ability to customize which vendors
appear in your search. Creating a custom account ensures that you only work with vendors
that you trust. We recommend only selecting vendors with whom you have a strong rapport,
have a high star rating, or are one of our preferred vendors. This greatly simplifies and secures
your selling process.
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DOES THE BOOK CONDITION MATTER?
Absolutely. The condition of the textbook you are selling is paramount to book buyback
companies. These companies will price your book at a certain condition level because the
price they are able to sell the book for at a later time is dependent on the condition. Here we’ll
go over the general industry standards for the conditions of books that you are selling. Keep in
mind though that some companies have policies that may vary slightly.
Because many companies have minor variations in their wordings, we’ll start by going over
what will definitively cause your book to be rejected by nearly all buyback companies.
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Missing pages
Pages damaged to the point where they are unreadable
Major water damage and stains
Workbooks that have writing in them
Odors (primarily tobacco)
Excessive highlighting
Page markings (writing, highlighting, and underlining) on majority of the pages
Damage to the binding (loose cover, pages separating from the binding, etc.)
Cover damage (missing, cut, stained, etc.)
Pages stuck together
Any other obvious damage that would prevent a store from selling a book
Most places will also not accept alternate editions such as Teacher’s editions, international
editions, custom editions, or illegally printed textbooks. However, a few places do accept them
(except illegal versions) so it might be worth it to check with the individual website on this. If
you are confused about if your book is a different edition, check out the section later in this
guide titled “Book Editions.”
Having any of these issues in your book will almost guarantee that your book will not be accepted. In the same vein, having some of these issues to a lesser extent can decrease the value
of your book, even if the company will still accept you book.
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OTHER ISSUES WITH BOOK CONDITIONS
One of the most confusing aspects of book condition can be page markings. Many people
highlight, underline, and write small notes in their books, but what is acceptable? First off, your
book will have the most value if there are absolutely no markings throughout the book. Nearly
all companies accept minor page markings; a couple lines highlighted here and there will likely
not cause your book to be unacceptable and will likely not decrease the value.
Page markings are the issue that people run into most of the time, but other issues can arise
that can decrease the value of your book. Here are a couple of common problems that can
reduce the price of your books.
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Minor stains or blemishes
Minor page tears
Small page wrinkles
Small cover damage
Missing an accompanying CD, DVD or online access code
Another common reason why people don’t receive payment for their books is if the book is
actually the wrong book; this usually arises when someone types in the ISBN wrong or accidentally ships a different book. Some companies may still pay you the price of the book that you
actually sent them, others may simply not pay you at all. Therefore, it is extremely important
that you make sure you type in the right ISBN on the website and ship the corresponding book.
Sometimes the real ISBN is obscured by some companies as they will put stickers over the real
ISBN on the back cover. If in doubt, the real ISBN can usually be found on the first few pages.
You also need to know about the pricing schemes that are generally used throughout the buyback industry based on book condition. Usually these conditions boil down to good (like new),
acceptable and unacceptable. Generally good, like new books will receive the full price that
company has offered. The price you will receive for an acceptable book will usually be around
half the full price offer. Books that the company deems unacceptable will not receive payment.
If you ship an unacceptable book the company will recycle your book and pay you no money.
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Some companies may expand the condition categories of books to include categories such
as new and very good. Generally these will only help you as they will usually only increase the
offering price.
BOOK EDITIONS
A final thing that can cause trouble is the edition of your book. As we discussed earlier, having
a certain edition of a book can void or reduce your payment.
International Editions
These are versions that are sold in other countries. They are usually cheaper and not always
the same as U.S. versions. These books will have some indication that they are an International Edition on the cover, usually at the top. If your book has some tape or stickers on it,
take this off to make sure that it is not covering up the International Edition insignia. International editions are usually paperbacks.
Custom Editions
These are books that are printed for one school specifically. These will nearly never be
accepted by online buyback companies. Once again, there will usually be an indication on
the front cover.
Instructor’s Editions
These are books that are usually given to teachers and have different content that is not
accessible in student editions. They will be labeled as such on the front or back cover. They
will also usually have the letters AIE (Annotated Instructor’s Edition) on the top of the spine
of the book.
Advance Reading Copy
These are given out before a book has actually been finished and published. They are illegal
to buy or sell. There will be a watermark of statement on the front or back cover indicating
that it is a promotional copy or some similar wording.
Older Versions
As long as you type in the right ISBN you will get an accurate quote. The price would only
change if you type in the ISBN of the new version then ship and older edition. While you still
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may get offers for old editions, you will almost always get the most money for the newest
edition of the book.
Ex-Library Editions
Most places will accept ex-library textbooks. Some may not however. These can be identified by a call number on the side, checkout cards on the inside, or a library name stamp.
A La Carte Editions (Looseleaf )
These are the exact same versions of hard and softcover bound textbooks. However, these
editions have no binding, instead they are 3 hole punched so you can put them in a binder.
Most book buyback companies do not accept these or offer a much lower price.
Book Club Editions
Popular fiction books are sometimes distributed by Book Clubs. These can be difficult to
spot, and only one or two vendors are picky about them (namely Powells Books). Book Club
Editions are a bit smaller than the regular hardback, and the dust jacket may not have a
price on it.
It is common for people to try to cover up the indications that these books are a version other
than the official student version. This can vary from colored tape covering it up,
stickers, or attempts to scratch off or mark through the pertinent information. Keep a look out
for any of these things when buying or selling books.
If you are still having some qualms about the conditions of your book, check out our Book
Selling Conditions Guide where we have pictures illustrating problems with books and
examples of different book editions.
CAN I SELL ANY BOOK?
Not every book is valuable. The companies that buy books on BookScouter are purchasing them
to resell. The companies need to pay for the book, plus the cost to ship it to them, so books that
are inexpensive to begin with, or have a lot of copies in circulation tend to be not worth anything.
Books that are expensive, have limited circulation, and remain relevant tend to be worth more.
College textbooks tend to meet all of these criteria, so they are generally worth the most. Massmarket romance and fiction books tend to be inexpensive and in wide circulation, so these
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are generally not worth anything. Antique or highly rare books often need to be researched outside of BookScouter because they were printed before ISBNs began being used in the 1970’s.
eBay and Abebooks.com are good sources for pricing and selling antique or collectable books.
BUY BOOKS
You can also use BookScouter to buy books. Just click on the “Buy” tab to the right of the search
bar on the home screen. Buying works very similar to selling: we present you the best offer,
show you other competitors options, and shipping is still free! Once you can understand how to
sell books on BookScouter, buying will be a breeze!
MOBILE APP
BookScouter offers two tools to assist you in book scouting on the go: the BookScouter mobile
application for iPhone & Android and the BookScouter mobile site (http://m.bookscouter.com).
The mobile app which can be downloaded from the app store on your mobile device is
extremely similar to the mobile site, but it does not require a supplementary app for
barcode scanning.
To look up a book price using the mobile app:
1
Download the BookScouter mobile app created by RoundSphere LLC (available for
Apple and Android)
2
Launch the app, taking you to the scanning page
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Type in your book’s ISBN and press “Search” or press “Scan” to scan a book’s barcode
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If scanning the book’s barcode, after pressing “Scan”, align the green box over the
barcode so that the red line lays horizontally across the barcode
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Hold the camera steady until it brings up your prices!
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Compare the prices for your books & click “Sell” to be directed to the vendor’s website
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So why use the mobile app? The BookScouter mobile app allows scouters to maximize the
convenience factor of using BookScouter in order to make the most money possible. The app is
helpful for buying books on a campus or scouting for books at yard sales and markets. For other
ways on how to buy books and use the mobile app, check out the “Where to Find Books” and
“How to Buy Books from Students” sections.
The mobile site is a simplified version of the BookScouter website that only provides the
option to type in or scan a barcode. It utilizes the Pic2Shop mobile app, so you will have to
download that app from the app store if you desire to scan barcodes. Otherwise you can
always just type in your ISBN!
To look up a book price using the mobile site:
1
Go to http://m.bookscouter.com in your web brower (available on all web browsers)
2
Type in your book’s ISBN and press “Search” or press “Scan” to scan a book’s barcode
3
If scanning the book’s barcode, it will prompt you to download the Pic2Shop app
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Download Pic2Shop in the app store and return to the mobile site
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Once you have Pic2Shop downloaded, Press “Scan” to open up Pic2Shop through the
BookScouter mobile site
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Align the red line to lay horizontally across the barcode
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Hold the camera steady until it brings up your prices!
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Compare the prices for your books and click “Sell” to be directed to the vendor’s site
MOBILE APP
MOBILE SITE
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KEEPING UP TO DATE
If you have any questions, we highly recommend using the FAQ on the website as your first
resource if you need assistance navigating the site.
SOCIAL MEDIA
We have an array of social media channels with which you can connect. These outlets provide
helpful hints, deals, and more to help you have the best book scouting experience.
Facebook
Our Facebook page is a great place to interact with other users, leave feedback, and snag
deals as soon as they come out. We have a Facebook Page for basic uses or a Facebook
Users group for those looking for more involved, personal interactions.
Twitter
@BookScouterCom provides the tips for making the most money in a quick, easy-to-read
fashion. Follow us to get updates on our deals!
Pinterest
Follow BookScouter on Pinterest for pinspiration on books, quotes, saving money, & more!
LinkedIn
You can also follow BookScouter on LinkedIn for updates about the site, positions available,
and promotions going on.
BLOG
We recommend checking our blog every time you visit our site. Our blog posts provide helpful
information such as newly added vendors, helpful guides for getting the most bang for your
buck, and vendor wide coupons.
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CONTACT
Should you experience any problems or wish to share any comments, suggestions, or feedback
for this site, please let us know. In case you can’t find assistance with a problem on this guide or
the FAQ, feel free to contact us using our contact form on the website and we will provide you
with the assistance you need as soon as we can. Your email address will only be used to reply to
your inquiry. We will never send you unsolicited emails or share your address with a third-party.
You can also use our social media outlets to contact us any time.
WHERE TO FIND BOOKS
Now that you know the basics of how to use the site, it is just a matter of finding books to sell.
FIND BOOKS ONLINE
When trying to find books to sell on BookScouter, the very first place you should look is on
BookScouter itself! BookScouter has a built-in tool called BookScouter Deals that presents you
with the books that you can flip for the highest profit. It identifies arbitrage opportunities by
identifying the books with the greatest differences in the lowest price offered and the highest
selling price. Using this tool, you can easily find opportunities to buy and resell books for instant
profit. For more information on how to use our BookScouter Deals tool, see our “BookScouter
Deals” section.
It’s also a good idea to use outside sites such as Amazon, eBay, or other books sites to find the
lowest possible buying price, then use BookScouter to find the highest possible selling price.
You can use our “Recently Searched High Valued Books” tool to find the books likely to fetch the
highest bounty.
Keep in-mind that online resale opportunities are open to everybody in the country that has the
same data. Anywhere that deals are published and easy to find, those deals tend to get sold out
quickly because a lot of people are looking at the same information. So while these online
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Check BookScouter Deals daily, you
never know when you will find a quick buck.
opportunities are a nice way to try things out, and sometimes can be quite profitable, keep your
eye out for opportunities outside of the tools that other people can also use. Now let’s take a
more in depth look at two of BookScouter.com’s tools for buying books online; High Valued
Books and BookScouter Deals.
High-Valued Books
This allows you to view the most expensive books searched for on BookScouter for the last two
weeks. From there you can limit the range of your search by putting in a maximum and minimum
parameters for your search. This allows you to see what books are likely to return the highest
bounty if you found them. Sometimes you can also look for high value books that you might be
able to find online on other websites.
BookScouter Deals
BookScouter Deals is an extremely useful tool for any business looking to use BookScouter as
a marketplace for flipping books. It identifies arbitrage opportunities by identifying the books
with the greatest differences in the lowest price offered and the highest selling price. Basically
you can by the book from the cheapest vendor then sell it right back to the highest bidder. The
difference is net profit for you! Note that BookScouter Deals is a free tool but does require you
to have a free BookScouter account.
This tool can be found by clicking on the “Tools” link at the top of the homepage. On the right
side of the screen, directly opposite of the “Book-Buying Tools” is the “BookScouter Deals”
button. You must have a registered BookScouter account to use this feature.
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To start, log in to your BookScouter account and navigate to your user homepage.
2
Click on the “BookScouter Deals” button which will take you to a new page that shows you
potential profits through the lowest Amazon offers and highest buyback prices.
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You can narrow the search by entering a minimum and maximum price and profit, age in
days that the transaction was latest verified and the minimum return percent.
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Once you have found a book that you would like to flip, click the ISBN number. You will be
brought to the BookScouter page.
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Find the book on Amazon or use our buying tool to find the lowest possible price for your
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Use the BookScouter mobile app or mobile site to scan books on
the go! This will help you determine if these books are worth buying.
book online.
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Then go to our selling page to resell your book for the highest possible price (for further
information, see your Sell instructional section).
BOOK LIQUIDATIONS ONLINE
There are several online sources for buying liquidated books online. Govdeals.com and
liquidation.com are two popular sources. Sometimes these sites will list the specific titles for
sale, and you can do some online work to cross reference titles with ISBNs to look up the value
before you buy. Often times though, books are sold by the box, or by the pallet, without a
specific list, so there is a much greater risk.
Keep in mind also, it is often easier to sell 100 different books than it is to sell 100 copies of a
single title. Beware of opportunities where it looks like you can sell 100 copies of one book for
$5.00 each because most book-buying companies on BookScouter will buy only a few copies at
a time, so you may only be able to sell a few copies at $5.00 before the price drops.
FIND BOOKS LOCALLY
In order to make money on selling books, you will need to buy them for less than they will sell
for. A great way to look for books is locally because there are a limited number of people that
will see these opportunities. When going to these places, you can easily use our website, mobile
site, or mobile app to type in the ISBN or scan the barcode so you can compare prices quickly.
BookScouter will help you see how much of a profit you can make and if it is worth buying new
books or selling the ones you have.
Garage Sales, Yard Sales, and Estate Sales:
These can be great opportunities to find amazing deals. Often, when people have garage and
yard sales, they are getting rid of stuff from their house, and don’t want to bring it back in. Books
are frequently overlooked at these types of places, so you can often make low-ball offers that
are accepted because the books will be donated or thrown away if you don’t take them.
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Use the BookScouter mobile app or mobile site to scan books on
the go! This will help you determine if these books are worth buying.
Library Sales:
Most local libraries receive donated books on a pretty regular basis. These books rarely end up
on the library shelves for many reasons, and usually the library uses these donated books by
selling them once or twice a year at a library sale. You can find a pretty good list of book sales
near you at booksalefinder.com.
These library sales will often take place over several days and have books start at $1 or $2 the
first day and drop in price each day. Often the last day is a “box day” where you can fit as many
books as you can into a box for $5.00.
Because these sales tend to have a lot of books in one place, you may find other people there
who are also buying books to resell. Some of them get really serious and have specialized highspeed tools to scan books as fast as possible. Most of these tools use a database of Amazon
prices, so even though they may be going fast, they can overlook a lot of books that the other
book-buying companies listed on BookScouter may use.
There are a couple tactics that you can try related to library sales:
Ask to buy all of the books left over at the end for a lowball price. Although the books are
more picked-over, this gives you the ability to go through everything at your convenience.
This may also involve figuring out how to transport and store a lot of books though!
Ask to get involved early in the process and go through the books before they are put out
for sale. These library sales are often run by volunteers who don’t know anything about
book values and are overwhelmed by their assignments. You may be able to provide some
valuable service in helping them to get more money for their books if you split the sales
price with them. A number of other ideas may work, depending on the organization.
FIND BOOKS AT AUCTIONS OR MARKETS
Another way to find books, specifically if you’re looking to buy books in bulk, is at auctions. Look
into auctions or markets near by that have books to sell for discounted prices. Another resource
is Govdeals.com which includes auctions from USPS lost mail. While it may not be plausible for
most people, buying in extreme bulk at these locations can turn a huge profit.
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GET BOOKS FROM COLLEGE STUDENTS
The best way to find high value books, specifically textbooks, is to buy them from college
students. The books students are selling back are almost always current editions, which means
buyback companies are willing to pay top dollar for them. You can usually get these books for
pretty cheap since students want cash for their books as soon as possible. Campus bookstores
usually offer significantly less than what a book is worth. You can find a happy medium buyback
price to still have a good profit margin while handily beating out the bookstore in pricing,
creating more demand. Check out our “How to Set Up Shop” section to read more on various
ways to find books.
Buying books back from students is a highly lucrative form of arbitrage. Better yet, there’s even
a system that makes this whole process a breeze. DineroBooks integrates all the elements of
the book buying process into one easy to use system. With it, you’ll be a book-buying pro in no
time. DineroBooks takes the guess work out of running a book buying business. With DineroBooks you can easily estimate exactly how much you should pay for each book, your profit
margin, how to pay employees if you choose to do so, and keep track of all of your books. If
you plan on running a book flipping business, DineroBooks is a must use tool!
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DINERO BOOKS
Dinero Books (www.DineroBooks.com) is a tool for buying books in person on or near college
campuses. It allows you to confidently quote prices based on real-time pricing from
BookScouter.com, so you have minimal risk buying books knowing that you can immediately
sell them for a higher price. By providing a repeatable system, it also allows you to easily train
other people to buy books for you as well.
After you’ve created and logged in to your Dinero Books account, you simply enter an ISBN and
the site will then give you pricing based on what buyback companies are currently paying for
that book. You can add multiple books to a transaction, and the site will total that up so that you
can pay the person for their books.
It is also used to keep track of what you paid for books, how many books you have bought, and
individual user performance of books bought and prices for those books. It is a very handy tool
for anyone keeping track of the buying and selling records for a small business. To begin using
Dinero Books, go to www.DineroBooks.com and create a free account. Once you have created
an account, you will have access to many features including price quoting, receipts, summaries
and more.
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HOW TO USE DINERO BOOKS
1
The following transaction is a sample of how you would buy a book from a student. The initial
step in using Dinero Books is to enter books you are going to purchase outside of BookScouter.
com. This can be done by clicking the “Buy Books” link from the user menu or clicking the
“Buy” link at the top of the page.
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On the Buy Books page, enter the ISBN of the book you are buying and click “Look Up”.
Next, you will see 3 “Add” buttons at the bottom of the page.
These are labeled and correspond to the condition of the book you are buying; new, good,
or poor. Also above these buttons will be the prices for each book condition.
The prices are calculated by averaging some of the prices that vendors are willing to pay.
The average is then multiplied by certain amounts to get the prices of each condition.
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3
Click the “Add” button of the corresponding condition of the book to add a book to the quote.
The site will generate a receipt based on the quantity of books entered and the price you
paid for the books. You can switch the price from the quoted price to whatever you paid if it
was a different price.
If you are buying more books from the same seller, just repeat the previous steps until you
have entered all the books.
4
Once all the books are entered, click the “Print Quote” button to quickly print a receipt for
yourself and the customer. This will print out the prices for the user without saving them. Use
the “Complete Transaction” button to save the transaction and print a receipt.
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5
Lastly, click “Complete Transaction” to save the transaction for future records. Under this
page you can also collect the buyer’s information for future e-mailing campaigns and create
referral codes to group transactions together.
THE PRICING ALGORITHM IN DINERO BOOKS
The system that Dinero Books uses ensures you are quoting fair prices to the seller, as well as
building a predictable profit-margin for yourself. You can tinker with the settings, but the default
settings will calculate quoted price by looking up buyback prices from the vendors that you
select on BookScouter.com. It then skips the top price (in case it is way too high), then takes an
average of the next three prices. It then multiplies that average price by certain percentages to
generate a price for each condition of the book that you might see.
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Sample Algorithm:
Given the settings above, and the prices for these buyback companies, lets walk through the
algorithm that Dinero Books uses to generate the quoted prices. You’ll see that pricing for these
books starts with Amazon.com at $43.80 and goes down to Powell’s which isn’t buying the
book. In the pricing Algorithm, the Step #1 is set to ignore the first price of Amazon’s $43.80.
Step #2 states that it is supposed to take an average of the next three prices. That includes
Bookbyte at $41.75, TextbookRush at $39.50 , and ValoreBooks at $39.27. The average of those
three sites is $36.70, as noted in the bold line of text at the bottom.
The pricing algorithm then multiples that $36.70 average by 0.7 to come up with $25.69.
DineroBooks then rounds that to the nearest quarter, or $25.75 to make it so you don’t have to
carry pennies. Similarly, it multiplies $36.70 by 0.66 to generate a price for a Good condition
copy at $24.25, and it multiples $36.70 by 0.5 to generate a Poor condition price of $18.25.
You can see how this pricing algorithm generates a conservative price for you to then resell the
book at a good profit. Let say you now pay this student $25.75 for the book. You could then
immediately sell it to Amazon in this example for $43.80, resulting in a $18.05 profit, or over a
70% margin. If you can repeat this process, you can see how for every $100 in books that you
buy, you can make more than $150-170 with virtually no risk. You can also adjust your pricing
algorithm to increase your margin if you are able.
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In practice, you can’t just adjust your algorithm down so that you make more money. You’ll
most likely need to be competitive with what a student can sell their book for at other places.
The defaults that have been set up provide a good starting point, and you can adjust those as
you see necessary.
ADDING USERS
What makes DineroBooks so useful is that you can easily train people to use it to begin buying
books from people in 10 minutes and be confident that they are quoting reasonable prices. It
allows you to see details about what they buy so that you can compensate them however you’d
like. You should definitely spend some time buying books yourself so that you understand the
whole process, but ideally, you would have a team of people buying books, and you’d spend
your own time selling those back on BookScouter running the rest of the process.
To add a new user, simply log in to DineroBooks.com, then click the “Manage Users” link on
the dashboard, and click “Add user” on the following page. Enter the new user’s email address
and password.
Roles:
User
Regular buyer, with access to buy books and see a report of what they have bought
Manager
Allows access to see how the pricing was calculated (ie: to approve a change of price), as well as
reports about other users
Owner
Same as manager, but can add additional users, configure pricing, and branding settings, etc.
Price %
You can use this to multiply all prices that this user sees by a percentage. In general, keep this at
100%, and you can use this in conjunction with other compensation plans for the user (below).
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WORKING WITH OTHERS: EMPLOYEES & BUYERS
Of course, we recommend trying to find trustworthy people to work with. In most cases, you’re
probably going to give them a fair amount of cash to start buying books, and odds are you don’t
want them running off with your money. Most people start out with hiring people that they
know - family or friends, or people from a church or social group.
Hourly Rate
The simple hourly rate tends to work best when the employees will be at a counter or stand, and
customers will be coming to them to sell books. Paying an employee an hourly wage also
generally means that they are either highly trusted to make the right decisions, or have easy
access to a manager or somebody who can assist for any out-of-the ordinary questions.
Per-Book Commission
People are often motivated by money, and paying a per-book purchased commission is the
simplest way to offer an incentive for buying as many books as possible. This can be combined
with an hourly rate to give them a minimum wage, plus some incentive to buy more books.
Make sure that the per-book commission doesn’t eat up too much of your profits. For example,
adding a $2.00 commission on a $3.00 book probably means there is very little, if any, profit.
You might choose to make the per-book commission based only on books over $10.00 or some
other number that you decide.
Percentage Commission
A commission as a percentage of the value of books that they purchase is another way to offer
an incentive as it gives them motivation to target higher dollar (and thus more profitable) books.
Bonuses Based on Buying for Less
This can be a little more complicated. Often times you don’t need to pay the full amount quoted
by the DineroBooks system. A common tactic when somebody is selling you books is to scan
them all in before offering a price to the student. As an example, let’s say that a student has 5
books that they are done with and ready to sell. You may scan all 5 of them in and find that the
total that you would be willing to pay is $82.75. Instead of telling them the price of each book,
you could say that you are willing to offer them $75.00 for all of them. If they accept your $75
offer, then you’ve made an extra $7.75, or about 10%. DineroBooks allows you to enter what
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you actually paid and keeps track of the original quoted price. So you could offer to split that
discount with your employee as a bonus, which gives them an incentive to help you make more
money.
Independent Buyers
As a different method than hiring people who work directly for you is a model that we call
Independant Buyers. The idea here is that you use DineroBooks as a tool for your independent
buyers to know how much you are willing to pay for a book, and then they can buy books for
whatever price they want, and you’ll pay them the price that DineroBooks quoted. These buyers
would often use their own money and social connections to just buy as many books as they can,
and know that they are able to sell them to you for immediate cash.
REPORTS
Once you have started buying books through Dinero Books, you can keep track of your
purchases in the “Reports” section. In the “Reports” section are links to “Purchase Detail”, “User
Summary”, and “Daily Summary”. The Purchase Detail feature allows you to see purchased items
in the time period that you enter. You can filter the purchases by user and ISBN (ASIN) to quickly
find exactly what you are looking for. This tool is very useful to keep track of your purchases.
There are three reports available within DineroBooks that allow you to track your book-buying
business as a whole or for specific users.
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You can upload this CSV file directly to the Bulk Lookup tool on
BookScouter to quickly and easily see offers for each book in your list.
Purchase Detail Report
This is the most detailed report and contains all of the details for what was purchased. You can
filter by user and date range to show everything that a specific user bought, and pricing details
for each of those purchases.
Note the 3 Columns for Pricing:
Base
This is the price that your pricing algorithm calculated.
User
This is the base price multiplied by the per-user price percentage: the price that the user
should have paid for the book.
Actual
When the user is buying a book, they may choose to override a price for some reason.
Perhaps because they were able to buy it for less for whatever reason, or perhaps they paid
more because a students said that they were offered more by somebody else. The “Actual”
price in this column is what they actually said they paid and can be used for accounting for
their cash, or in calculating bonuses.
Also, clicking the “Details” button includes the email address and coupon code that may have
been entered as well.
This report can be downloaded as a CSV file if you’d like to open it in your spreadsheet for
further analysis or more complicated calculations.
User Summary Report
The User Summary report shows a summary of what each user purchased in the specified
date range. This is the easiest way to do reconciliation at the end of the day. If you gave John
$500.00 cash, and he bought $430 worth of books, you’d expect that he should have $70.00
left at the end of the day.
Daily Summary Report
The Daily Summary report allows you to see as a whole, or per-user, how many books, and how
much money was spent each day purchasing books.
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ADMINISTRATIVE SETTINGS
There are several more features under the “Administration” section. The “Settings” link takes
you to the settings page where you can change which companies you receive results from, how
your price is calculated, and the names of your price levels. You might choose to use different
names other than New/Good/Poor for displaying throughout the site. Many people use Very
Good/Good/Damaged, or other variations, depending on how you’d like it to be displayed.
CUSTOM PRICES
DineroBooks allows you to set a certain price for individual books by clicking the “Custom
Prices” link. On the “Custom Prices” page, just enter the ISBN and click search. Then enter the
price you wish to use for this book for now on. The custom price will then be shown each time
you purchase this book. This is useful if you have a different source, other than BookScouter to
sell specific books. Some colleges have “Custom Editions” of textbooks that do not show up at
all on BookScouter because they are specific to a school, but you may know that you can sell it
back to somewhere else, and can set a custom price here. The other common use-case is to stop
buying a book that you may already have too many copies of. You can set a price of zero here to
avoid quoting prices until you have sold your existing copies. To remove a custom price, simply
return to the “Custom Prices” page and click the red “X”.
BRANDING
DineroBooks allows you to ‘brand’ the entire site with a different name and logo. This can be
useful if you’d like to disguise the actual software that you are using, to prevent employees or
customers from being easily able to do the same thing and compete with you. On this screen
you can upload your logo, and set the hostnames that you’d like to use to access the site (for
example buy.yourdomain.com instead of dinerobooks.com).
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You’ll also need to buy the domain name and use your domains DNS settings to ‘point’ the
hostnames to the server named ‘dnb.fbgtk.com’. If you need help with that part of the setup,
we can walk through the settings on your DNS hosting with a screen-share.
PRICE OF DINERO BOOKS
Perhaps the best part about Dinero Books is that it is free for the first user. You don’t even have
to give your credit card information to create the first account for free. You can also create
additional accounts through the same account for an additional $10 per account per month.
If you set up and use the custom branding feature, that is an additional $50 per month.
Payment Information
Lastly, the “Payment Information” link takes you to a page where you enter the payment
information to pay for the DineroBooks.com service.
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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Now that you know the basics of BookScouter, Dinero Books, and the book buying/selling
business, it’s time to make a business of your own. The best and easiest way to make money is
setting up a stand or booth at a college and buy back textbook from students. In this section,
we outline strategies to buying and selling books that will help you earn a large sum of money
by utilizing our book expert tools.
YOU GOTTA HAVE MONEY TO MAKE MONEY
The biggest hurdle for running this business will be the ability to have cash on hand. You will
likely need a few thousand dollars readily accessible to start your business and may have to
wait up to two weeks to see any returns. Yet buying and selling books is a shockingly low
investment – especially if you use Dinero Books and BookScouter to guide your process –
given that you could quite easily double your money after running a stand for only a few days.
The peak season for textbooks buying and selling is at the beginning and end of every
semester. If you’re looking for a quick turnaround, focus on buying at the end of December
and selling at the beginning of January!
There are various options for borrowing money depending on your situation and
personal preferences:
Start selling things you have and re-invest in the business (be careful in what you take out
of the business, because it is easy to spend all of your profits!)
Borrow money from family or friends (often with a promise to split some of the profits)
Cash advance on a credit card or line of credit from a bank
Micro-lending sites like Prosper.com, NetCredit
Business lending sites like Kabbage.com, PayPal, and Amazon Lending (if you have sales
from Amazon, eBay, or Etsy)
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HOW TO FIND STUDENTS SELLING BOOKS
Your second biggest hurdle will be getting customers to actually visit your book-buying
business. Keep in mind that you are offering customers a highly desirable service: the ability to
turn obsolete items into cold hard cash. Once sellers are at your stand, convincing them to part
with their textbooks should be a breeze. The important thing for your business is ensuring that
people visit your stand, so marketing your business is key.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Remember, the main advantage you have in running a local book-buying business is
convenience. This market is great in that it can be successful on big or small campuses: you
just need to know where to set up. We recommend finding a spot as convenient to your
potential customers as possible. A good idea is to set up a table/booth on or near a college
campus, specifically in the textbook buying and selling peaks (beginning and end of each
semester). To begin, you would need to contact the University and/or local bookstores to
ensure they do not have restrictions on setting up on the campus. You may have to register a
spot depending on the school. Many schools have study centers where people can register to
set up a booth so that they can communicate with passersby.
It may be that your local university doesn’t wish to provide you with a location on which you
could run your book stand. That’s quite alright, there are still plenty of other places that you
can set up shop. Try getting permission from a fraternity, sorority, or dormitory to set up right
outside their building for an afternoon. Also, most college cities have apartments that cater to
students, making them ideal places to put your stand. As long as you set up in an area that has
a dense student population, your business should be busy. People will be eager to save themselves a trip to the bookstore, and will be glad that they have a simple way to to turn their
books directly into cash.
Outside of a University’s Student Center
A student center will often have the most traffic by students on a college campus. This obviously
makes it a potential goldmine for buying books. However, you will likely have to get permission
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to set up a stand anywhere on a college campus. Also, some universities may not want the
competition you present their own bookstore. To pull this off, you will likely want to have a good
connection with someone in the administration of the campus. Small colleges are more likely to
be accepting of impromptu bookbuyers than larger ones.
Through a Fraternity or Sorority
If you have a previous connection with a fraternity or sorority or are able to establish one, then
this is terrific way to get your hands on a lot of books in one of the most convenient ways. We
recommend communicating with your connection to establish a time that you can go to their
organization and pick up a mass quantity of books. This makes it easier for you and organization
members. Also keep in mind that when other Greek organizations see this, they may be
interested in your services. If you continue to make connections you will likely be able to partner
with other Greek organizations before any competition does. Also remember that most Greek
organizations pass things down through each graduating and incoming class. Once you have
established a connection, the organizations will likely keep coming back to you as long as you
are good to do business with.
Through a School Organization or Club
This is similar to how and why you would go through a fraternity and sorority. As with the
fraternity and sorority strategy, try to establish one time where you meet with the whole group
and pick up their books en masse to make things easier on yourself. We recommend targeting
major specific clubs because these will be more populated by upperclassmen who have limited
books that are likely worth more than the mass market books in most entry classes.
In/Near a Coffee Shop
Scope around a college town for a day and see where the students go on their breaks and after
class. Once you find a popular spot, check around and see if there are any buildings available for
rent nearby. You may be able to rent this out for a month during the end of classes. If there are
no spaces for rent nearby or you are unable to secure a rent for this short of a time, we suggest
talking to the owners of the coffee shop. You may be able to come to an agreement about a
stand outside of the shop. At the very least, you may be able to advertise through the shop for
your business.
In/Near Popular Restaurants Near Campus
This is similar to a popular coffee shop. Ideally you could find a street that is populated by
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restaurants and shops that target college students. If you can, this would be a great place to set
up a location to buy books.
In the Lobby of a Dormitory
This is another great idea however it will also require permission of the school. If you can get this
permission though, this is a fantastic place to get students to sell their books.
Outside of a Student Apartment Complex
Most college towns have student specific off campus housing. These apartments will often do
things to make themselves more appealing to their students, and they will likely agree to you
setting up a stand on their property.
In Front of a Bookstore
This will likely be tough as the bookstore will probably not want the competition. However if you
can find an adjacent lot then this is a fantastic option that can put right in front of students specifically looking to sell their textbooks.
Through a Class/Professor
If you know a student or professor teaching a class you may be able to buy the books of their
students through them. At the least you may be able to get them to send students your way.
Any Other High-Traffic Campus Location
Some other ideas might be by dining halls, classrooms, or a quad.
Take a day to scout out your campus for when the best time to buy is. Most campuses start to
buzz around 10 AM. Keep in mind most schools also have differing schedules on different days
of the week. Usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday have the same break times and Tuesday and
Thursday have the same break times.
As you may have noticed, many of these require some relationship with someone in the group,
college, or shop. It is very important to be friendly and establish connections at every possible
opportunity.
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BE SAFE!
It is very important that you stay safe while operating your stand. Only set up shop in well lit,
preferably densely populated areas. When picking an area, make sure it is safe--you can view
crime reports online for an area. Don’t work alone, always have a buddy with you. It’s a good
idea to keep your money in a portable safe. Also, don’t have too much cash on hand at any
moment: we recommend having someone drop off money when your stand runs out. If at
any point you feel unsafe, close down shop.
ADVERTISING IDEAS
You have to get the word around that you are buying books back from students. It’s a good idea
to highlight the fact that you will pay more than the local college bookstores. Here’s some ideas
on where and how to advertise.
Flyers
Create and distribute flyers on or near a college campus. You can hang them on campus
billboards, bus stops, residence halls, apartment common areas, local restaurants, coffee shops,
bars, student centers, etc. You can also hand them out to people on campus in person. Be sure
to check if there are any restrictions on hanging or distributing your material and if so, get them
approved by the appropriate party.
Email
It is often fairly easy to find email addresses of students, especially if you have an email domain
through the university already. Send out an email the day of finals on a campus, as that is when
students will be done with their books and most likely to sell them. Keep your email brief, and
make sure it informs them of the specifics of your stand.
Social Media
Facebook
Post in any major Facebook groups for colleges and specific campus organizations.
Try pinning a post to the top of a group or boosting a post on your own Facebook page.
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Twitter
Send out Twitter blasts prior to opening your stand. You can also look into creating a
promoted post. You should do some research and find out what Twitter accounts in the
area have a large following. If some of them belong to a student, you may be able to
advertise directly through them. This is cheaper than a Twitter promoted post, more
organic, and will also reach your target audience likely better than a Twitter promoted post.
Reddit
Posting your location and time on a University subreddit can be a great way to spread the
word around a college campus. It can also help create connections with a school or Greek
life organization so you can organize a mass book buying session. Keep in mind though
that usually only larger state schools will have a subreddit set up.
Yik Yak
Create a Yik Yak account to send out localized messages. Try wording your post as a life
hack rather than an advertisement so it does not get downvoted and deleted. Humorous
posts on Yik Yak tend to get upvoted more and therefore get more exposure. Keep this in
mind when creating your post. The amount of upvotes your post gets in the first couple of
minutes is very influential to the success of the post. You may want to have people you are
working with upvote your post to increase exposure. You can also try to have any family
and friends in the area support your post.
Radio Stations
Many colleges have local or campus radio stations. Create a short, informative, enticing
message to be played on the station. You can also offer to be on the show as an expert on
making extra cash.
Large Vinyl Signs
Hang large “Cash For Books” signs in high-traffic areas pointing people to your location.
Leave dates and other specifics off of the sign so you can reuse it every semester.
Student Representatives
Look into hiring students as representatives for your shop. They will be able to promote your
stand, text friends, post on social media, and will most likely settle for a small fee. They can also
be instrumental when creating connections with campus groups and Greek Life groups to set
up mass pickups.
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Sporting Events
Investigate buying out an ad space in college sport programs. Featuring your shop during the
game may be extremely pricey, but smaller program ads are more feasible.
SELLING WORKFLOW
After having set up on a campus for the day, head back home to use BookScouter to sell the
books you collected. There are various possible workflows, depending on what you find
convenient, and how many books you have to go through. You can download your purchase
history from DineroBooks and upload that into the Bulk Lookup tool on BookScouter to do a
quick analysis. Depending on how your books are organized, you may be able to use the results
from the Bulk Lookup, but most people that we’ve seen prefer to go through each book again
individually, as that often takes less time than hunting through many boxes of books to match
them up to the bulk results.
When going through the books that you’ve purchased, scan each one in on BookScouter.com
and decide what company that you’d like to sell it to and put it into a pile of books destined
for that vendor. Some people like to put a small sticky note on each book with the expected
prices. Once you’ve gone through everything and sorted books into their destination vendors,
you can then go to that vendor’s website and scan them all into that vendor, confirm pricing,
and then create your final order.
BOXES
In order to ship in bulk, you will need a lot of boxes with which to send your books in. It is best
to have already prepackaged your books before you go to a shipping facility. The cheapest
way to get a large amount of boxes is to simply go to a store and ask for their leftover packing
boxes. Most bookstores will be pleased to have boxes off their hands. Another way is to order
boxes off of Uline.com or Ebay.com for relatively cheap. It is also a good idea to order bubble
wrap sheets and scotch tape for packing your books up.
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FREE TOOLS
BookScouter has provided its customers with a variety of helpful tools to ensure that every
book scouter is as effective of a bargain hunter as possible. We have an assortment of free
tools that don’t require an account. BookScouter deals is also free, but requires you to set up a
BookScouter account. Lastly we offer three Pro tools that are available with the Pro Version of
BookScouter ($29.99/mo). BookScouter Pro has features that benefit users looking to make a
lot of money off of buying and selling books.
Look Up Books Without ISBN
This allows you to look up the books that are too old to have an ISBN. This allows you to search
by Author, Title, and Publish Date (all 3 are necessary). NOTE: We do not recommend using
BookScouter to sell old or antique books. It will likely be of little interest to our vendors and will
fetch a higher price on Ebay.
Other Free Tools
BookScouter Deals
Recently Searched High-Value Books
Historic Buyback Price Lookup
PRO TOOLS
Bulk Lookup
Possibly the most useful tool of BookScouter Pro is the bulk lookup feature. This tool allows
you to look up multiple ISBNs at one time & receive all of the best prices for each on one page.
Use Cases:
To quickly evaluate inventory, or a potential inventory purchase.
You may have many copies of inventory that can’t all be sold at once. Keep your extras in
a spreadsheet and run it through the Bulk Lookup occasionally to sell your extra copies.
You may list inventory on other channels (ie: Amazon), and look for opportunities to sell
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any of your inventory to a BookScouter vendor as an immediate sale instead of waiting for
it to sell on a Marketplace.
How to Use:
1
The initial step in using this tool is to create a .csv, .txt, or . xls file containing the ISBNs for
each book. You can also manually paste a list of ISBNs by clicking the “Paste a list” button.
2
Once you have entered your data or selected a file click “Search for Prices”.
If using a .csv, .txt, or .xls file, the ISBNs must be in the first column. When creating the data
file, keep in mind that this system, while effective and efficient, does take longer depending on how many book ISBNs are entered. Due to this, it’s a good idea to pre-sort the list
and remove ISBNs that are on the list multiple times or books that you already know will
return a low price. There is a limit of 3,000 ISBNs per entry. Any ISBNs past 3,000 will be
discarded, so be sure to tighten up that list!
3
After clicking the “Search for Prices” button, you will be taken to a page that shows the
number of ISBNs entered and the status of the search. You will also see a minimum price
threshold: this hides results that are below the minimum price that you are seeking for
your book.
When initially arriving on the page, you may not see any of your books listed. This is
simply part of the system. The page will automatically refresh every minute until you
start to see all of the books you entered and the prices that each party is offering.
Most submissions will only take a few minutes but, submission and processing of the
list can take 20 minutes or more to complete.
Once it has processed, the list prices will begin to show for each vendor with the best
price highlighted in yellow.
4
Once all of the prices have loaded, you will see a grid listing the price for each book on
each site. You will notice that in every row there is one highlighted number. This number is
the highest quote offered for your book.
5
It may look overwhelming, but simply scroll down to the bottom of the grid to see the
column totals.
The total on top is if you sell every book you’ve listed to one that one vendor.
The total below each check box is the the sum of all of the highlighted numbers
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within each vendor’s column, meaning it is the sum of the books that this vendor is
willing to pay the most for.
If you dislike a vendor and would not like to sell to them, simply check the box at
the bottom of the vendor’s column. Then click “Hide Checked”. This will recalculate
which offer is the best for each book, excluding any offers made by the vendor(s) that
you have checked.
6
Here you have a choice to make. You can either (A) Sell all of your books to one vendor
which simplifies the buying process but cuts down on your returns or (B) Sell each book to
the vendor that pays the most.
If you choose to sell your load to one vendor (A), click on the “Sell Here” button
underneath the vendor that will pay the most for your books. Then skip to step 9.
If you decide to get the maximum value for each book (B), please continue to step 7.
7
Scroll over the “Sell Here” button. A pop up will appear that lists the ISBNs of the books
that the vendor will pay the most for. These are the ISBNs of the highlighted price in each
column.
8
Once you have copied the list, click the “Sell Here” button. This will bring you to the
vendor’s site.
9
Paste the copied list of ISBNs into the vendor’s page.
From here, follow the directions that the vendor provides. Many vendors will request
that you create a login ID for their site. Most vendors will require you to input the
condition of your book. The expected resale value may vary from the original listed
price on BookScouter, depending on the condition of the book.
All transactions will be performed through the selected vendor’s website. You will
likely be prompted to input a return shipping address and identify your payment
preference on their site.
If you are only selling to one site, then you are all done! If you are trying to get the
most for each book, continue on to step 10.
Repeat steps 7-9 for each column to sell off every book in your inventory for the highest
possible price!
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Notifications
Another useful tool of BookScouter Pro is Notifications. Notifications will email you when a
company is buying a book for a minimum price that you set. This can also be used for a list of
books or an Amazon Active Listings Report.
If you are selling an individual item click the “Add an Individual Item” button and enter
the ISBN and the minimum price your wish to receive and click “Add”. You can also write
a brief note about the book by using the Notes box.
If you sell books on Amazon, you can use Seller Central to generate an “Active
Listings Report” under the “Inventory” tab. Once the report is generated, click the
“Upload an Amazon Active Listings Report” and then click “Choose File” and select the file
you wish to enter. Then you can account for things like shipping, postage, and packaging
fees by entering the predicted amounts in the corresponding boxes. Lastly, enter the
percent of your price you are willing to sell at.
You can also use this tool for bulk notifications by creating a .csv file and uploading it by
clicking “Upload a Simple List”.
Click “Choose File” and upload your list to sell each individual book at a specific
desired price by clicking the “Upload” button at the bottom.
When creating the list, the ISBN should be in the first column and the minimum price
desired should be in the second column. Any additional desired notes can be entered
into the third column. Although BookScouter will automatically email you when the
minimum price is reached, you can check any currently active notifications by click
the blue Browse All link.
Finally, remember that notifications expire after 30 days. If you have high inventory that is
held for longer than a month, upload a fresh list every 30 days to ensure you get the prices
you want.
BookScouter Deals Email Notifications
BookScouter Pro users have the option of receiving email notifications when a new BookScouter Deal is found. When enabled, you can configure the minimum profit or maximum
price points for which you’d like to receive notifications.
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ADVANCED TACTICS
Barcode Scanners
As you start to buy and sell books in bulk, you will want to have a barcode scanner to simplify
the process. They are relatively cheap (under $40), accurate, fast, and easy to use. For most
scanners, all you have to do is plug it in and start scanning. To scan, just aim at the barcode
under or above the ISBN and click the scanner trigger. This will scan the ISBN into your computer and most models will simultaneously hit “Enter” on your computer. You can use these to
quickly enter your books into BookScouter, Dinero Books, and even personal spreadsheets.
Some scanners may have software you need to install to use the product. This is relatively easy
and the scanner should come with a setup wizard to guide you through this process. Here’s a
well reviewed scanner for around $30 on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Taotronics-TT-BS003-Automatic-Sensing-Handheld/dp/
B006LVO56W/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1436244708&sr=8-3&keywords=barcode+scanner
Peak Buyback Prices
Textbook buyback pricing is a highly seasonal and pricing is very much driven by supply and
demand. When a college semester is ending and students across the country are selling books
back, there is an over-supply, so prices tend to be lower. Conversely, at the beginning of a
semester, when students are buying their textbooks for the semester, there is a large demand
and prices tend to be higher.
Using this knowledge, you may sometimes choose to take a bit of a risk and instead of selling
a book immediately during the end of the semester, you may be able to save it for a couple
weeks or months and selling it for more at the beginning of the next semester.
Historic Buyback Price Lookup
You can use this tool to see the price history for the book. This can help you decide if it might
be worth keeping a book and selling it back during one of the peak periods.
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AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
If you own a website you can potentially make money through BookScouter.com’s Affiliate
Program. The program is free to join and easy to use. The Affiliate Program allows you to earn
a commision based on how much traffic you generate to BookScouter.com. Once you join the
program you will be sent a range of banners and text links to use on your site. When someone
clicks on one of these links they will be automatically sent to BookScouter.com and will be
counted as a “click” for your commision. Payments are then made once per month for the
previous month. You can also login anytime to check your sales, traffic, account balance and
banner and link performance. The Affiliate Program is an excellent way to increase monthly
income. To join the Affiliate Program click on the link “Affiliate Program” at the bottom of the
BookScouter.com home page and click “Signup Now”. Then just fill out the information and
click “Create My Account”. Once you have created your account you can check how your doing
and receive content through the Affiliate Homepage and Manage Account links.
CONCLUSION
Now that you know the ins and outs of BookScouter and the book buying and selling business,
you can go out there and make money on your own. Whether you are just selling some books
on hand, ridding of old textbooks, or making a business, BookScouter is the place to make the
most money for books. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions/concerns and
connect with us on social media! Don’t forget to interact and communicate with others on our
Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/bookscouter/).
Copyright © 2007-2015 BookScouter, LLC
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