Is it better to rent books for college or buy them?
If I should rent, where should I rent from and if I should buy where should I buy from so I don’t have to spend too much money?
You can always find the books on a site like slugbooks.
My kids always bought their books online and rarely paid more than $50 per semester. If you can’t get the current edition for a reasonable price, you can email the professor and ask. That’s what a lot of students do. The professors were all students at one time and know that books can be expensive. They’ll let you know it there will be an issue.
Wait until you get the confirmed class syllabus.
Good Luck!
If you can’t find them online, rent your books! It’s so much cheaper and it’s more sustainable. Your college bookstore should have books available for rent, and if not, Amazon and Barnes and Noble might have them.
For books that are in your major and will become part of your professional library, buy them. And I would buy new.
For all the rest, as cheap as you can get.
You can also do your homework in the college library (assuming it will be open) and use the textbook there. My daughter did this for several classes. She rarely purchased text books. The downside of this is that you won’t be able to leave the library with that book, but it’s fine if that’s where you will do your studying.
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You will have more luck renting books for “popular” courses…e.g. Pysch 101 or Calc or the like. In more obsure courses there will be less books available for rent.
Buying is good if you may have to use a book for more than one semester or if it is something you build on (e.g., calculus) or have to study again (e.g., Bio for MCATs).
Renting is good for classes you won’t really touch on again.
With renting you don’t have flexibility…e.g., if you have to take an incomplete…they still want the book back right after finals would normally be.
But with renting it will be cheaper.
Also realize sometimes you can buy or rent used books which are even cheaper.
I would compare prices of new books, used books and rentals. With rentals make sure you also look at return dates. If you need a code for the class often new is really the only way to go to get the code.
If a code is listed by the college you can email the professor to see if it is needed (sometimes it is listed simply because it comes with the new book).
If no code is needed you can also ask if an older edition of the book is okay.
To me personally a like new used book is no different than a new book for a book I may want to save.
book comparison sites like the above slugbooks are a good starting place. My daughter has only rented from amazon which has been really easy to do returns.
How does this site work? U download for free?
I would suggest this is a dangerous plan in the current COVID remote work environment, where students could be sent home, or all building closed, any day.
Only if you don’t carry about copyright violations and malware. There’s even a handy “how to remove b-ok.* malware” site ready and waiting. http://www.malware-killers.com/delete-b-ok-org/
And no, it doesn’t have “literally” every single book.
@bellrosie I have found that just googling “gen lib” and clicking the top hit that includes rus and ec is a terrific resource of the free knowledge movement along with SciHub. If the textbook was not written by the professor, there is a very good chance you can find a pdf download there, and it is not sketch at all. It has saved me a lot of money, and can really drive home that you are attending online classes haha 
SciHub is good for finding specific articles or papers to use in research (if your school library does not have subscriptions or interlibrary loans for something). Both have my full endorsement.
Make sure you get the ISBN code right. It specifies version. Not just any book with the same title.
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