Buying vs. Renting Textbooks-Part I
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A major source of expense for any college student is purchasing textbooks. Textbooks that deal with any type of technical material, such as math, science, engineering, etc. are especially expensive; these textbooks can easily sell in the $200 and over range. If you major in one of these subjects, spending $1000-$1500 or more on textbooks per semester is certainly not unheard of. As I dicussed in an earlier post, buying from the school bookstore is not usually a student-budget friendly option. Not only are the books very expensive, chances are you will never need the same book again.
After plunking down your considerable coin for your textbooks, you will only be offered a pitance when you go to sell it back to the bookstore–even if you have kept it in immaculate condition. What can even be worse is when the professor has decided to go with a new textbook for next semester. You’ll simply be out of luck getting anything at all back from the bookstore.
Now, you can always go with a used textbook from the bookstore, and you will save a considerable amount of money as compared to a new book. But there are limited numbers of used books available, and the longer you wait to buy them, the odds increase that the ones left are in poor condition with major highlighting in them. You always run the risk that there won’t be enough used textbooks to go around, and will not have any option except to buy a new one.
So what are some other options for students looking to purchase textbooks at reasonable prices? The first thing to do is to find out what the ISBNs for the textbooks you need are. ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, which is a 13-digit numerical code that identifies each book individually. To find the ISBN of a book, you can look for it a number of ways. ISBNs can usually be located on the back cover of a book, directly over the bar code. Another way to find the ISBN of the specific book listed by your professor is simply to go online to your college’s bookstore site, and search for textbooks by professor and course number. The ISBNs should be clearly listed here.
When you have the ISBN number in hand, you can try a number of websites to look for discount textbooks. Here are some sites to check out:
1) Half.com
3) Ecampus.com
Update: My reader, Lena, has suggested www.CampusBooks.com as another site to check out for buying and selling books. Please see her comments below. If anyone else has a textbook site to suggest, I’d be happy to add it to the list.
In my next post, I will be discussing renting textbooks, a relatively new option available for students.
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Tagged with: Textbooks
Filed under: Money saving tips
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I like this post. It is so true that students often spend a LOT of money on them. I look forward to exploring the book links, too.
As a book dealer, I find some great deals on Amazon when I have time to do that. I go to the book listed, then check the used books that are on the same page. One thing I’m always sure to check is whether or not the book has the original CD (if there is one.) That can make a difference.
On
Thanks so much E., and also thanks for the tip about Amazon. Students need all the help they can get with college expenses. BTW, I’ve been to E. Sheppard’s site, http://non-traditional-students.blogspot.com and it is a terrific resource for adult (non-traditional) students. She also moderates the Non-Trad Students group at Yahoo Groups for anyone who might be interested.
This is a very helpful post, thank you! I’d like to suggest one more resource for buying and renting (and selling back books). Try http://www.CampusBooks.com as it lets you compare deals from multiple sellers and pick the best one for you.
Thanks again for a great site and entry!
Thank you very much for the tip, Lena! Students need all the resources they can get to save money in these trying economic times. I will add the site to the list.
My son all ways uses http://www.bigwords.com to get his textbooks. Its a big help for him to find his books for super cheap cause some of them are really over priced and it makes it very hard to help him purchase his books. With using Bigwords your able to i guess search hundreds of online retailers to find the book that is the cheapest all across the board.
Thank you for the tip, Mary! It’s great to let students know all the options available, especially for something as expensive as textbooks.
Check out this site http://www.bookase.com, A price comparison search engine for books and textbooks. It searches for the lowest prices among the major online stores worldwide and also offers discount coupons. You can also choose among various shipping options to calculate the lowest price