Six months after taking the test, I’ve finally sold all of my GMAT books to Amazon. Selling these books was just one of those tasks that was difficult to prioritize with essays and interviews hanging over my head. I now no longer have that stack of GMAT books sitting in my apartment staring back at me.
Initially, I created a Craigslist ad to try and offload my books. The problem with this strategy was that there was a ton of competition in my area. People were offering the exact same thing I had (MGMAT Strategy Guides + Official Guide Books) for $100 or less. I failed to get anyone to bite.
Anyway, as I was perusing Amazon a few weeks ago, I noticed they had a textbook buyback program that included the MGMAT books. Note that the end date to this offer is May 31 of this year. I buy from Amazon at least once a month, so getting Amazon credit for my books is as good as cash.
You’ll see that for most of the books, I only got a small fraction of the retail cost. However, for the MGMAT Strategy Guides, Amazon was willing to pay $78 for a product that had a retail listing of $114. That’s almost 70% for books I’ve had out for nearly a year. I was a little concerned about returning the MGMAT Strategy Guide set because each book has a different ISBN, which are all different from the one that Amazon has listed on the product page. This week I got confirmation that my trade-in was accepted, so don’t worry if the ISBNs aren’t exactly the same – as long as you have the right books and the right edition you should be fine.
No symbolic burning of the books? 🙂
I was about to do that, but soon realized that I was about to go $150 K in debt and thought it would be best to save up. 😉
Hi Mark!
I’m done with the GMAT as well and have a big ‘ol stack I can’t wait to get rid of. I have all the books you mentioned plus possibly a few more. I was looking at the Amazon trade-in program but it states specifically that answers cannot be filled in, and some of my books (actually, maybe half) have the answers filled in, even though the books themselves are in good condition. I guess this means Amazon won’t accept my books?
Shipping is free, and if they don’t accept your trade, they’ll just send it back to you. Probably worth giving it a shot on the ones that are lightly marked and seeing if they’ll take them. Otherwise, Craigslist is another viable option, but it will take a bit more work.
it is not a bad idea