The Complete Guide to Saving Money on Textbooks
With student loan arrears at an all-time high, the high cost of textbooks is further damaging. Save tons of money this year by buying your textbooks the right way.
When buying textbooks, you have four options: buy new, buy old, rent, or copy. Some methods obviously save more money than others, but reach comes at a cost. You may also need to combine multiple methods to get what you want. While they all seem simple, the details are economical. In this post, we’ll take a look at how to get the most out of your money, no matter which direction you take.
Get discounts on new tutorials
You probably already know the best strategy if you want to pay as much as possible when buying a new textbook: go to a bookstore on your campus. If you can’t find what you are looking for elsewhere – and we have many options in this article – you should stay away. When it comes to new books, it will be difficult for you to find another store that charges you more money.
Big retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble , or even local bookstores, should offer better deals in every way. Whether you order online or in person, keep an eye on coupons and offers to save a little more. If you want to find the best deals on the many tutorial sites, take a look at BIGWORDS . It will also provide a comparison of used books and several ways to find what you need.
If you end up buying a new textbook and want to get some of that money back, some places offer buyback programs. You can use your college bookstore, but online resellers like Amazon , Chegg , Barnes & Noble , BookByte , Cash4Books, and Alibris (whose textbooks are bought out by Chegg) can make you more money.
Buy used textbooks
If you want your textbooks but don’t mind a little wear and tear, buy used ones. With so many options on the internet, you need to pay attention to sites that have quality ratings, or let you know about the quality of the tutorial. While a slightly tattered book will serve you as much as a shiny new one, you want to know that you won’t have a ripped book spine or pages filled with cartoon penises (if that’s not your thing).
Also, check out the store’s return policy for those special occasions where you do receive a spineless genitalia textbook in need of replacement. Most used textbook sellers are very attentive to the used books they buy for resale, but from time to time something slips through the cracks. A Google search will reveal an almost endless supply of used textbook retailers, all of which are quite challenging to sort through, and not all have a great reputation. Here’s a good list of starting points:
- BIGWORDS (comparison site)
- CampusBooks (comparison site)
- Amazon
- Valor
- Half.com
- AbeBooks
- eCampus
- Alibris
- Biblio
- Bookbyte
- Textbooks.com
Regardless of how you buy, you will want to find the cheapest price. Searching multiple sites individually can be challenging. CampusBooks and BIGWORDS will show you everything in a nicely organized list, as well as help determine the cost of the buyout so you can factor this into your decision.
Textbooks for rent
You don’t need to buy anymore. Renting textbooks gives you the books you need at the right time, without the burden of ownership. For that, we like Chegg . In addition to the rent, they will plant a tree for each order . You have other options, of course. Valore , Textbook Rentals , BookRenter , Campus Book Rentals andTextbooks.com can handle this too.
Some colleges have started renting textbooks outright and will buy books to rent if they are out of stock. Contact your school to see if this is possible and plan ahead so they can order a book for you if needed.
If you’re going digital and looking to rent , take a look at CourseSmart . This will allow you to read online or in a copy-protected PDF. You can also access their content through the iOS and Android mobile apps . Kindle owners or app users can also rent textbooks from Amazon .
If you plan to sell your books at the end of the course, you can also rent them. Just avoid marking or degrading as much as possible. If you do, you may end up paying a commission. Renting will save you money if you take good care of the books, but since they will inevitably find a new home when you’re done, you will need to keep them in the best possible shape.
Photocopy just what you need
Things get more complicated when you want to make photocopies of a textbook. While you can potentially get free content by copying or scanning the pages you want from your school library (or from a friend), it takes a lot of work. If you have a day to get work done (and you have free access to a copier or scanner) or you only need to copy pages from a few books (for example, those that are little used in a certain class), you should consider this option. you get the most money.
First things first, get a large three-ring binder to keep all your textbooks in one place. You should contact your professors before classes begin to find out which chapters they will cover so you can avoid copying more pages than you need to. It can help you combine your reading materials into a simple, compact, and lightweight solution. If you really want to be slim and not carry weight in your backpack, leave the tutorial pages at home and swap them as needed.
If you want to ditch paper altogether and go digital, you can scan textbooks and create PDFs that you can put on your laptop, e-book reader, or iPad. You can also sync these files with your Evernote account for free Optical Character Recognition (OCR). For more information on digitizing books, check out our guide to digitizing your life .
Make sure you get the right books
If you do not pay close attention to this, you may buy the wrong edition of the textbook. New releases usually change the configuration of chapters, even if they add very little new content, so while you may not need the latest version, you may have trouble finding the same information as your classmates.
You also need to pay attention to the volume (s) that you order. Each volume contains different chapters, and you can easily skip the material you need if you don’t check it carefully. Before ordering, ask your professors for the ISBN number of the books you need to be sure you get the right one. If you cannot get this information before the start of the class, do not order anything. You can always get the book later and have a photocopy at your campus library while you wait.
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