This review of We Buy Books is specifically for those wanting to sell secondhand books. I tested out We Buy Books when selling my own unwanted books online and compared them to their online competitors.
About We Buy Books:
WeBuyBooks.com is owned by Revival Books Limited, a UK company based in Lancashire.
They attract lots of excellent reviews from their site users on Trustpilot.
We Buy Books are unusual in offering a service for books with no ISBN (see below) and a catalogue of specialist books they are especially keen to buy.
How to Submit Your Items on We Buy Books:
- You can enter items on We Buy Books via their mobile apps or on the website
- The app scans your bar code via your camera, or you can type the ISBNs in manually. It’s available on both Google Play (Android) and the Apple App Store (iOS).
- On the website you need to enter ISBNs manually but there’s a bulk upload facility for pasting in up to 25 ISBNs at once
Additional items you can sell at We Buy Books:
- WeBuyBooks also buy CDs, DVDs and video games
Creating a Trade at We Buy Books:
- There’s a minimum of £5 per trade, but this can be a mix of books and other items.
- You must be at least 18 years of age or have permission of a parent or guardian to sell to We Buy Books.
We Buy Books Review – Books they won’t accept:
The following may cause books to be rejected on arrival
- damage or string smells from fire, smoke, liquid, mould
- substantial damage to the front cover or binding
- missing dust cover
- missing, loose, torn or chewed pages
- excessive annotation, writing or highlighting – a limited amount is allowed as long as it doesn’t affect use
- book club editions or rental copies, promo or proof copies, self-published or self-printed books
NB We Buy Books do accept ex library books as long as they have a withdrawn stamp.
They also provide a service for books with no ISBN. You just need to email them the book’s details.
What We Buy Books do with rejected items:
If your books fail the check they can be returned to you, but at your expense – £2.40 per book.
We Buy Books delivery mechanisms:
- When you agree a sale you’ll be emailed a postage label to print. You then package the books and take them to a Hermes collection point.
- Or you can arrange for home collection.
Getting Paid by We Buy Books:
We Buy Books ‘seek to pay within three days’ of checking goods in. In my experience they do achieve this.
Payment is by bank transfer, cheque or Paypal.
Bonuses & Offers at We Buy Books:
- We Buy Books offer 10% extra on your first trade
- If your trade contains £25.00 worth of items you get an extra 5% payment
- They also have a Refer-a-Friend scheme which can earn you £5 for any friends who go on to sell to We Buy Books.
My Experience with We Buy Books:
I’ve created three different trades on We Buy Books.
Trade 1 – This was a mix of books, CDs and DVDs. When the goods arrived I had an email saying one dvd was missing (my fault – I had accidentally left it out) and 1 damaged (I wasn’t aware of this, but it’s possible so I decided to take their word for it this time and see if it happens again). They proposed to reduce the offer by £4.18. You have to go to site and agree to the reduction, which I did.
The whole process took a month from beginning to end, but was delayed mainly by a lengthy Hermes delivery and faults in my items, neither of which are really their issues.
Trade 2 – My second trade took just 6 days from creation of trade to payment received. All items were approved.
Trade 3 – My third trade was in January 2021, during COVID lockdown. This time it was even faster – just 5 days from creation of trade to payment received! All items were approved.
We Buy Books Review – in Summary:
My comparison of online book buyers found that We Buy Books are at the higher end pricewise, with the best average price of the UK companies I looked at.
While some buyers make a high number of rock bottom offers (less than 10p), We Buy Books are a bit more selective, offering on fewer books (less than 1 in 3 in my case) and not going below 15p.
Based on my own experience I find We Buy Books to be very fast and fair in processing trades. Other site users seem to agree.
See my reviews of other online book buyers in the UK
Comparison of price offers received from online book buyers