New weekly textbook buyback every Wednesday at the UPEI Bookstore!

Bring your books to our front cash counter to see if we will buy them back from you. At our weekly Wednesday buybacks in the store your money back will be put on your debit card, credit card or on a gift card—we are not able to give cash back the way we do when the table is set up out front. At the start and end of each semester there will be more books that we are buying to resell at the Bookstore and a better chance you will be offered more money for your books. Please read on for more information about different types of books that we will buy back.

Used textbooks are split in to two categories that we call retail books and wholesale books.

Retail books

• The retail books are a list of textbooks that the Bookstore is looking to purchase from students for resale at the UPEI Bookstore to other students. For these textbooks you will be offered around 50% of the new book price for that book. We work with the course instructors to generate this list and it is only books that we know will be used again for upcoming courses at UPEI. 

Wholesale books

• Wholesale books are all books that are not on the retail books list from the Bookstore. You will generally be offered a much lower value for these books and that price is determined by our wholesale partner not by the UPEI Bookstore as these books will belong to them. These books are not resold at the Bookstore they are taken by MBS Textbook Exchange to be distributed to other Universities. Unfortunately with the wholesale books you may only be offered a few dollars for a book that was very expensive if that book is not being used again for a course at UPEI. 

Extended buyback periods

Four times each year at the start of each semester in September and January and during exams in December and April we have extended buybacks. There will be a buyback table set up in the hallway just outside the bookstore, please take books to that table. During these buybacks you will be given cash for any books that you sell back to us.

If you have a book that you are not offered money for you can choose to drop it in our donation bin. These books are sent out to a company called Better World Books who then distributes those books to various areas of the world.

We want to thank you for your continued support of the UPEI Bookstore’s textbook buyback program over the past few years. Our goal is to provide our students with an option to sell their used books and to be able to offer used books for sale to students at a lower cost than having to buy new textbooks. 

We hope this answers some of the questions and concerns out there about this program. If you have any questions about our textbook buyback or about anything else please talk to us or send us an email at bookstore@upei.ca.