Textbooks:

Textbooks are the highest value books that you will find. It is not uncommon to find textbooks with several hundred dollars in value sitting on a thrift store shelf, priced at a couple of dollars. This type of return is the bread and butter of bookselling and the reason that you should never pass up a shelf of textbooks. Textbooks will almost always have an ISBN number and a bar code, which makes them easy to scout with a PDA-scanner or a scoutpal activated phone.

When you are scouting in a metropolitan city, you should expect to find two to five textbooks a day, ranging in value from twenty to several hundred dollars. These will be the backbone of your purchasing for the day.

Social Sciences:

The social science section of the bookstore is always good places to try after you hit the textbooks. Social Sciences are: psychology, sociology, anthropology, woman’s studies, gender studies, racial studies, linguistics, political science and religious studies.

The social sciences is a big category that may contain a lot of books. So how do we concentrate our search? PDA-scanner users might begin by scanning all the books with bar codes and seeing what turns up. In general you will want to do this in sections that you find have produced well for you. A good rule of thumb for those with scoutpal activated phones is to look for quality publishers. Over time you will find that books from publishers like penguin will tend to have little to no value. Books published by major universities and quality publishing houses will have higher value. Look for Oxford Press, Harvard Press, or Thomson Press to name a few.

History:

When you look through the history section we recommend that you look for newer works. Often you will find clean hardcover history that will sell for close to its cover price. The history shelves will be full of less valuable books, so train your eyes to pick out the better quality printers and newer copies.

Next lesson, Crafts, Medical, Fiction.