Most six formers these days have to buy their own text books and students studying for their GCSE’s will often have to buy their own revision guides. These books are typically not cheap and generally are of little interest after the student has completed their exams.

For most subjects however the books are not updated frequently (after all Shakespeare is not writing any more plays and the basic laws of physics do not vary from year to year) meaning well looked after second hand books are still perfectly good for the next years students.

Yet most of us consign the books to a bookshelf never to be looked at again (mine are still sat on a shelf now a good decade and a bit later), if an enterprising teenage entrepreneur had offered me £20 for my books when I finished my A-Levels I’m sure I’d have bitten their hand off - just as I’d have been over the moon if I could have brought the books originally for say £40 second hand, instead of the £75 they cost me.

Of course there’s nothing limiting this to trading with your school or college, at present there are nearly 30,000 textbooks listed on ebay.co.uk. Plus if you have a local university nearby then there’s bound to be a good supply of students needing textbooks or wanting to turn their old text books into beer tokens!

As an alternate business model you could run a simple website to facilitate the lending of textbooks or operate as a textbook rental service (you’ll need to ensure you have the correct permissions to lend the books out).

I suspect that most schools and teachers would be happy to promote such a business as it helps their students, especially at a time when schools budgets for textbooks seems to be increasingly under pressure.

This post is part of the my teen business week series.

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