How a Tweet Increased the Buyback Price

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 02:00:50 -0400
bookstore, buyback, social-media, textbooks, twitter

At the conclusion of each semester the UMBC Bookstore holds an end of term textbook buyback offering students the opportunity to sell their unwanted books back to the store for cash. In addition to the books needed on campus for the next semester the Bookstore buys books from a list of hundreds of thousands of titles that UMBC is not using, but that other schools have requested. Managing this list is a complicated undertaking, but the Bookstore’s goal is to pay as much money as it can for as many titles as possible.

UMBC Bookstore responds to student tweet about buyback.

When one UMBC student @LindsayMiguelez tweeted that she could not sell back her brand new political science book the UMBC Bookstore staff heard her concern and went to work trying to figure out why. After some quick research the buyback personnel determined that while the ISBN of that particular book was not in the national database to be bought back, they could in fact offer some money for it. The textbook manager immediately added the text to the buyback list and tweeted @ Lindsay to bring her book back for some cash. In the end she may not have decided to sell that book to the Bookstore, but a lot of other students did; and the store was able to pay out more money to more students because of Lindsay’s tweet.

The UMBC Bookstore is always listening on Twitter and Facebook.

Still have books you want to turn into cash? Stop by the next buyback:

Summer Session II Textbook Buyback: August 18-19, 9:00 a.m – 3:30 p.m.
Back-to-School Buyback: August 29 – September 1, 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.,
September 2, 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.