Most of us felt this problem when we were students. What
problem? Expensive textbooks? Let’s face the fact.
Textbooks are actually pretty expensive and at the end of every semester, we
have no use of it. Of course, some of us give it to the juniors, but most of us
kept the unused textbooks at home collecting dust. We need a better way to
clear the textbooks, so that they can be in good use for others who need it.
Recently, I was introduced to this website, named BookUp.
BookUp is the project brainchild of two everyday Malaysians that wants to
make a difference in the society, more specifically, the students society. What
is BookUp exactly? BookUp is a website which sells textbooks as well as books
for up to 70% cheaper. Not only that, for those of you who have too many books
lying around and have no idea where to sell them, BookUp will handle that
for you. Which also means that book owner like me does not have to spend time
searching for buyers to buy my books. That sounds so cool, isnt it?
Their website (http://bookup.my/) is simple and easy to
use, (picture attached) with obvious buttons showing “I want to buy” and “I want to sell”. As the curiosity in me
increased, I clicked to find out more about the ways to sell my books. The
website indicates that there are only THREE SIMPLE steps to sell your books:
1. Submit your books ISBN
2. Ship for free (T&C applied)
3. Get paid
The founder of BookUp, Mike explained “As a student once, I understand the challenge of having too many
unused textbooks at every end of semester during my university years. The worst
thing is I do not know what to do with them, except sell it to the recycling
centre or donate to the orphanage. I wish knowledge could be shared with others
through books. We at BookUp will handle everything for you, including sales,
marketing, packaging, warehousing, packaging and posting, so all you have to do
is sit back and relax while we clear up your inventory for you.”
To be fair, they’re only taking a mere 20%
of the sales AFTER the sale is completed. That’s RM2 for every RM10. That’s something I can afford to give for someone who does all the
work on my behalf.
Year in and year out, Malaysian students are buying books, LOTS
of them and eventually, a big portion of them goes to waste. We all want to
help the environment through recycling and I can’t think of any other better ways to do it than this project! It’s simple math. For every used textbook that you decide to reuse,
you are reducing the number of wasted book by 1. That could sound like a small
amount, but imagine the same 150,000 students in Malaysia doing the same thing
each year. Just stop for a second and imagine the amount of trees that we can
save, just by doing a simple decision, and that is buying used books.
