Trade textbooks with The Amazon Student

Since forever, college students have done the trade-in dance at the beginning and end of semesters to exchange unwanted textbooks for cash. Usually that cash goes back to the bookstore for the next round of textbooks (or a bit of end-of-semester partying), but it's a tried-and-true way of getting at least a few cents back on your hard-earned dollars. Amazon has just released The Amazon Student app (free) to let you do all of your textbook trading the easy way -- from your iPhone.

As you're pounding down the end-of-semester celebratory tequila shots, you can use The Amazon Student to scan the barcodes on your textbooks, games, movies, and electronics to get a trade-in offer from Amazon. If you accept the offer, it's added to your trade-in list.

When you're done scanning your roommate's books and games (he's passed out under the bed anyway), just sign into your Amazon account, tell 'em where you want to ship the books from, and submit. A few moments later, a pre-paid shipping label shows up in your email and you're ready to roll.

Payment is through an Amazon Gift Card, suitable for buying any fun or, dare I say it, educational material from the Amazon store. By the way, I made $75 scanning some old reference and text books while testing the app for this post. Not bad!