Buy textbooks at semester end, sell at semester start

How it works

Required textbooks have a brutal price cycle: in the last week of term students sell them for whatever they can get, and in the first week of the next term new students need the same edition immediately. You buy in the dump week, store over the break, and sell in the rush week. The books that work are the ones with a stable edition on a large required course: introductory chemistry, statistics, calculus, nursing, accounting.

Scanner apps that show current resale prices tell you in seconds whether a book is worth carrying home.

What it actually takes

• A campus or two nearby, or access to their buy-and-sell groups.
• A scanner app and the discipline to only buy at a third or less of the current sale price.
• Somewhere dry to keep boxes for three months.
• Listings ready to go the week before term, with condition described honestly.

Where it goes wrong

• Edition changes. The publisher releases a new edition over the summer and your box of last year's edition becomes recycling. Check the course syllabus if you can, and avoid subjects with yearly updates.
• Access codes. Many courses now require an online code sold with the new book, which makes the used copy nearly worthless.
• Amazon. Fees, competition from rental services and the platform's own used stock cap the margin on anything mainstream. Campus groups are where the margin still exists.
• Buying too broadly. Twenty copies of a book that sells three per term is a loss no matter how cheap they were.