There are several bookstores in the Tacoma area that will purchase used textbooks from individual sellers. These include the Tacoma Book Center, at 324 East 26th; and Half-Priced Books at 4027 Tacoma Mall Boulevard. Retail chains such as Borders and Barnes & Noble generally do not sell textbooks or buy them back, although both of these companies offer to purchase textbooks at their online sites.
The University of Washington operates book stores at all of its campuses, including Tacoma. The Tacoma outlet will buy textbooks to be used in the next quarter at up to 55 percent of the new book price. The store will only pay market value, which is usually less than 55 percent of the cover price, if the book will not be used, if it is an older edition, if it is in poor condition or if the bookstore needs no more copies to meet demand.
You can also go online at Craigslist.org and post a seller's listing of the textbooks you have available. Craigslist has become a popular outlet for private sales of college textbooks all over the country, and if your textbook is needed by another student in the next quarter, and you list a fair price for the book, you will likely get a response.
There are several websites that offer to buy back used textbooks. These include WeBuyTextbooks.com, TextbookLink.com and BigWords.com. These sites allow you to search titles by ISBN number, and many will pay the shipping cost. You should be aware, however, that textbook buyback sites will not offer full market value, as they follow the current rates for the books on Amazon.com and other sites and subtract a significant markup amount from that rate as their offer for your copy.