The end of a semester offers several obstacles for students to overcome. Term papers, studying for finals and moving out all pose a challenge of some sort to the average student. However, there is the one obstacle that can bring feelings of sorrow, almost more than that of failing a final. This is the biannual process of selling books back to anyone who is willing to take them off your hands.

Options for taking on this task include selling them to an online company, the campus bookstore, or directly to students who need them.

Selling to an online dealer, such as Amazon.com or Bigwords.com, can have mixed results. Many sites will pay for postage and offer better deals than the campus book store. However, these sites will only pay in credit toward your next book purchase at that site. This limits the options for graduating students who have no need for textbooks in the future.

The other setback with e-book sites is the possibility that they may not accept a student’s books due to the fact that they may be in poor condition. Most sites do not send the books back and a student is stuck, with no cash or credit for their next buy and no return on their postage, either.

The option of selling directly to students can be more profitable than selling books to an online dealer or to the campus book store.

“The thing to do is to put up fliers in the dorms before classes start saying the books that you have for sale, then pricing them a few bucks below what they are at the bookstore,” said sophomore Bhavish Batal.

With this technique a student can get more cash than what an online buyer or the bookstore would provide, but the chance of not selling a book is a possibility.

The option of selling the books back to the campus bookstore is the route that most students follow.

The Barnes and Noble on campus “will pay you 50 percent of the selling price for your textbooks provided we have an order from a professor for the next term and the book is in reasonable condition,” said Debbie Schneider, manager of the campus bookstore.

“Ninety-nine percent of all books have some value. Old editions are the only books that generally have no value,” Schneider said.

There is a possibility that a professor will not have submitted an order form.

This is why so many students receive only a small fraction of the original cost of the book. This is often the cause of complaints students may have at the end of the semester.

Other Barnes and Noble superstores are not authorized to provide a buyback. The only stores which have the ability to buy back are the campus bookstores.

“The best time to return books is at the end of each semester, the week before finals, and the week of finals,” Schneider said.

Selling books back doesn’t just benefit students.

“Used books are important to both students and the stores for the same reason-they help keep costs down,” Schneider said.

The next week will be one of the busiest times for the bookstore.

“Over 6,000 transactions occur at the bookstore during the two weeks of buyback. Each year, the dollars paid back to our students increases by at least 15 percent,” Schneider said.