Q&A: Can I sell teachers editions or solutions manuals on Amazon or eBay?

QUESTION: I've known for a long time that we are prohibited from selling teacher's editions on Amazon or eBay. As a used bookseller who also home-schools (and has experimented a lot with curriculum), I'm aware that I can list my books through e-groups or Home School Legal Defense Curriculum Marketplace (though there don't seem to be a lot of bids there. I see a lot of zeros).

So I was rather surprised and hopeful to see a math solutions manual listed on Amazon, both new and used, a book that I want to sell (but can't if I'm to comply with their prohibitions). The teacher's edition of the same book is also listed, although the listing doesn't state that it's a teacher's edition.

So I started thinking hopefully that maybe they've changed their policy on this. But I looked and it still says the following are prohibited:

Solutions manuals. Manuals or teacher's editions that provide answer keys to student textbook editions are prohibited.

Is Amazon inconsistent or just unaware? I'm not planning to tell them. It just bothers me that I would like to list these books with them and can't, and yet the books are actually listed there with copies for sale. Have you or anyone else had similar experiences or frustrations?

ANSWER: I've never understood why teacher's editions are against Amazon's policy in the first place. As long as the buyer is getting what they expect ... But the policy hasn't changed as far as I know.

Is buying a teacher's edition cheating? Seems like a silly question to me. Anyone who goes to the trouble of buying and reading a teacher's edition is probably going to learn the stuff assigned for their class, and isn't that the whole point? Besides, 99 percent of the teachers manuals bought online are probably purchased by teachers and homeschooling parents.

At one point I had a ton of teacher's editions and I sold them all on Amazon under the regular ISBNs by listing them as "collectible" then providing the description. I guess Amazon polices Marketplace more closely these days.

I wonder if any Pro-Merchant sellers are creating detail pages on Amazon for teachers editions and solutions manuals? There's probably nothing to prevent it, unless they have a filter that includes all the ISBNs for these items.

But for the two examples you've given, they don't look like seller-created pages, it looks like Amazon is carrying the books. So my impression would be that if Amazon has a "Sell Yours Here" button on one of their pages, it must be OK to sell that item.