As the year wraps up, most students are ready to unload their old textbooks before going home for the summer. A great way to get rid of your unwanted books is to sell them back to the Pacific Bookstore. Our Cash for Books program is simple to use, but can be tricky to understand. Here’s how it works:
We only buy back books for the upcoming semester. This means that at the end of spring term, we’re buying for summer and fall. At the end of fall term, we’re buying for winter and spring. Because Pacific is such a small school, not every class is offered every term. So if you have a book for a class that’s only taught in the fall or only taught in the spring, your book may be worth more if you hold onto it until right before the semester that it’s needed.
However, if the book changes editions during the time it’s not being used, the book may be worth less. When you sell your books back to us, we’re able to tell you if there’s a new edition planned for the book, and that can help you decide whether to sell it immediately or hang onto it a little while longer.
If a book is being used on campus in the upcoming semester, we’ll give you 50% of what you paid. If the book is not being used, we’ll offer you the market value of the book, which is based on national demand for the book.
We cannot buy international editions or instructor editions of books. We also do not buy back books with damaged or broken spines, books that are water-damaged, or workbooks that have been written in or that are missing pages.
You can help yourself get the most money back by encouraging your professors to turn in their book orders before the end of the semester! By finals, we usually only have 60%-80% of book orders turned in. We cannot buy back a book at 50% back until your professor specifically tells us he or she is going to use it again in the upcoming semester.
We can only buy back a certain amount of books, so your odds may be better if you bring in your books at the beginning of finals week rather than the end.
The best time to sell back your books is always going to be at finals. That’s when we plan to buy back books, so that’s when you have the best chance of getting the most money.
Don’t forget that renting books is a great way to guarantee savings! The rental option is usually available for about 65% of classes and can save you hundreds of dollars. For the most complete list of rental titles, check your classes on our website 4-6 weeks before the start of term. Rent your books online during the summer, and we’ll have everything ready for you to pick up when you arrive back on campus in the fall.
For students who don’t like to carry around a backpack full of heavy books, we offer digital options on nearly 60% of all our titles. Digital books can save you up to 50% off the price of a new book, and all digital books that run on our NOOK Study platform are can be fully integrated with Pacific’s LMS, Moodle. The NOOK Study software is free to download, but at this time, it only runs on Macs and PCs.
If you have questions about buyback or rentals, please stop by the bookstore and see us. We love to talk about everything we’re doing to keep the cost of textbooks down!
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