BookScouter helps you sell textbooks and used books for the most money by comparing offers from over 30 book buy-back vendors with a single search.
For college students, BookScouter provides a place to buy and sell their textbooks for a better price. But, the question is, is BookScouter legit?
In this article, we’ll be doing a BookScouter review of how it works and its authenticity.
Table of contents
What Is BookScouter?
BookScouter is a free online platform that organizes buy-back prices from over 30 vendors. This lets students get more money back because they can choose the site that will pay the most. In other words, it helps you sell textbooks and used books for the highest amount by comparing the bidding from different vendors in a single search.
As an aggregate site, it provides data on vendors who will buy your books. It does not directly buy books from sellers and the prices are set by the vendors, not BookScouter.
It is an online platform that allows you to search for prices for a book at more than 42 buyback book vendors. On BookScouter you can find where to sell textbooks and regular books.
Let’s go on to find out how BookScouter works.
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How Does BookScouter Work? BookScouter Reviews
Most people feel that BookScouter buys books and sells back the book which is absolutely far from what they do. It simply uploads the prices for other vendors, who will indicate interest in the book they need and you then sell your book to those vendors. So, on BookScouter you can either buy or sell books.
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BookScouter is integrated with a website called Zapier to help automate the book buying and selling process.
Here’s an overview of how BookScouter works:
1. Find your book
You can use BookScouter’s website or app to input or scan your book’s ISBN via the search bar. Once you input or scan the book’s ISBN, you’ll receive the list of buy-back prices from vendors including Amazon, Bookbyte, and Powell’s.
You can search for books by the title too, but it’s easier to find an exact match if you enter the ISBN.
Once you find the book, the next step will be to review the pricing of different vendors.
If you’re finding it difficult to find the ISBN, make sure you check the front or back cover of your book or even the first or last few pages of it. Without the ISBN, you won’t be able to ascertain the price for it through the site.
2. Compare the prices and reviews
Once you’ve entered the ISBN for your book and you hit enter, the site displays a list of various vendors and their prices that you can sell your title. These prices are clearly listed alongside each vendor.
On BookScouter vendors get ratings from users. This might also help direct your decisions on the site. So, while it’s important to compare the buy-back price, you should also read the reviews and ratings from other customers.
Even if a vendor offers a service at a high price, they might be terrible to work with or their fees might cut into your profit.
3. Ship your books and get paid
You select which vendor you’d like to use, accept their offer, and ship the book or click on the sell link to them for free using a prepaid shipping label.
Once you decide which buyback place you want to sell to, click on the sell link that’s next to the vendor’s name. This will take you to that vendor’s website.
You’ll need to ship your items to the website – make sure that you follow the instructions each site gives you. For most vendors, it’s free to ship your stuff. But, it’s always good to double-check.
In some cases, payments are made when the book is checked and confirmed to be in a good condition. How quickly you get paid and how you get paid varies from vendor to vendor.
If you opt for a payment option like PayPal, then you’ll get paid much faster than if you choose to get paid by check. In fact, if you choose to receive a check in the mail, you have to wait for an extra three to seven days to receive payment.
How Can I Sell Books On BookScouter?
BookScouter makes selling books to vendors effortless. After you’ve scanned or entered the ISBN, you’ll get a list of offers from over 30 vendors to compare and choose from.
In addition to the pricing, you should also read the reviews from other customers. Even if a vendor offers a high price, they might not deliver the best value.
If the prices you’re seeing doesn’t meet your standard, or you get a list of vendors all offering $0.00 for the book, you can sell your textbooks somewhere else. Selling your book via BookScouter may be fast, but you might not always get the highest price possible.
And even though BookScouter averages prices from 30 vendors, you may find you can get more selling the book on your own on eBay, or Amazon might pay better.
YOU MAY WANT TO SEE: How to Make Money on eBay without selling anything
Once a deal is entered on BookScouter, package your items securely and carefully when you send them off. If they arrive in poor or damaged condition, they can revise their buy-back offer, and you’ll receive less money than the agreed price.
Can I Rent Books On BookScouter?
BookScouter also offers the option to buy and rent books. So, if you can’t afford to buy a book on BookScouter, renting might be a good option. To get started, you need to search for the book using ISBN, compare the prices from over 20 vendors and pick the one that won’t hurt the pocket.
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Make sure you review the cost for the rental period and note the return date. You might find that renting a book, although cheaper upfront, might end up being more expensive over time, especially if you need to renew the book or you return it late.
How Much Can You Make Through BookScouter?
As a seller or renter, you can make as much as you want on BookScouter as prices are considerably set by vendors. Prices offered for used books differ dramatically.
One book might earn you bucks, while other textbooks, can earn you quite a lot. Before you list your book for sale or rent, do well to search for your title to get an idea of how much it’s been sold by other vendors.
Tips For Making Money Selling Your Used Books
In other to make money from book sales or rent, there are certain tips to be adhered to. As we rightly mentioned earlier, you don’t sell or rent your books to BookScouter, it only gives you an avenue to meet potential buyers. The same is applicable to buying — the site itself doesn’t buy your used books. It’s the third-party vendors that the site features that do.
Here are a few tips that will help you to make the most money selling your books to the websites featured on BookScouter.
1. Compare Prices
To make money from BookScouter, your pricing has to be considerate and in tandem with other prices attached to that particular book. Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t sell your books higher than the price fixed by another vendor, it will only be nice if your book is affordable. Remember, the price goes a long way in determining the success of a business.
So, if you want to make the most money selling your books, you need to take time to have a thorough look through the results.
BookScouter doesn’t always put the vendor with the highest offer at the top of the results (although much of the time the best price is listed first). It also takes a vendor’s rating into account when ordering the results.
2. Don’t forget to take seller ratings into account
Asides from taking the price into consideration, you need to be aware of the value of vendor rating as an important element that stimulates buyers.
A vendor that offers $20, rather than $25 is always going to attract more attention at first. But, if the one offering $25 has a 5-star rating, and the one offering $20 only has a 2-star rating, then it might be better to go with the higher offer.
Low ratings always have a way of scaring buyers. In some instances, if a seller has low ratings, you might have issues like waiting a long time for payments.
While BookScouter does list a customer rating alongside each vendor, you can’t seem to click on this to see the reviews.
C. Sell at the right time
Selling at the right time has a way of impacting how much you get for it. When a book is in high demand, you can capitalize on that situation and rack up huge sales.
Additionally, BookScouter has a Historic Buyback Price Lookup tool which allows you to view the price history of a book. Using it, you can see if there are any times where you might get a better price for your title.
D. Ensure the book is in a good shape before shipping
A little wear and tear might not really matter much especially when it comes to used books. But, when it goes beyond that, you might have your books rejected by sites. This in turn leads to bad reviews and poor ratings.
Most sites will have the rules for acceptance on their site, so have a look around for more details, before you ship anything. Things like torn pages and damaged covers are generally unacceptable.
Is BookScouter Legit? BookScouter Reviews
With a 3.8 of 5-star rating on Trustpilot and 4 of 5-star ratings in both the Google Play and Apple App Store, Bookscouter is legit.
Users like the easy-to-use scanning feature, the ability to see multiple offers at once, and how it provides an avenue to make money from selling off old and unwanted textbooks.
On the other hand, there have been complaints about the functionality issues of the app, like not recognizing or finding ISBNs and poor customer service.
Summarily, BookScouter is legit and easy to use. Click Here to check it out.
Final Thoughts
There’s definitely a huge market for selling online, and BookScouter provides a simple solution to help estimate the cost of books and identify places where you can sell or rent your book for profit.
The process for buying, selling, renting, and receiving payment is straightforward. With BookScouter, you might be able to turn your passion for books into a way to generate income.
References
- bookscouter.com
- dollarsprout.com – How to Earn Money Selling Your Used Books with BookScouter#
- moneypantry.com – BookScouter Review: Why You Should Sell Your Books on This Site
