Does anyone here have any experience in purchasing class books on the internet?
My son is off for college and he was asking me for some extra cash for books, etc.
He suggested it’s cheaper to buy books online for him.
Are they even allowed to sell school books online?
Just want to make sure or I’d rather pay more now and buy them from the proper school. At least I know I would get an invoice this way.
How do you guys do it?
Buy or rent. There are several that do it, and Amazon even has pick up for returning rental books at many of the bookstores on campus.
Sometimes they are cheaper, sometimes not, but almost always more convenient. Your son should make sure he needs all the books or needs the most current version. If he has a lot of literature classes, he may be able to borrow the books from the library. My daughter had a bunch of books that she got from intralibrary loan. Saved a bunch. Engineer daughter got a lot of books from friends after freshman year, and she could have bought a lot of prior editions as used books that first year but we just didn’t know. If she’d gone to class first, before buying them, she’d have saved several hundred dollars.
First, you have to know which Textbook and which version/issue of the book is needed by the professor. You can do this by looking at the syllabus of the class if you can access that, or you can usually use the official college bookstore to determine which textbook to use.
Once you know the textbook, you can buy it new or used. You can rent it new and sometimes used. Renting is cheaper than buying, but you won’t have it later. Your student would have to decide if it is helpful to have the textbook for future classes (e.g., a calculus book) or could they borrow the book or go to the library or look it up on the internet if they need it in the future.
Then you can decide where to buy the book. As long as you have the exact version of the book, it doesn’t matter where you buy it/rent it. If you buy the book through amazon or Chegg or the like, you will not be buying /renting the book directly and can rely on selling/renting company to take care of any fraud situations which are unlikely.
We buy online or from the bookstore depending on price. I usually go on the college bookstore website where I can look up the required book by course number and section. I get the ISBN number and check a few sites like Amazon and Chegg. If renting, your student has to remember to return the book at the end of the semester. Some schools have a good rental program from the bookstore. Sometimes we can buy it used cheaper than the rental cost any way. I also use ebates to get some cash back from book purchases.
We get the ISBN number check the price at the college bookstore and then search online for better prices. So far we had a mix. Got some on Amazon and some at the bookstore. Luckily our school does mostly Open Source or school provided books so we haven’t had to buy many at all. One we got just because he liked it and wanted a paper copy. This year so far there are no books listed we have to buy!
It’s a good place to do it. It is often cheaper. Something else that students often do is go on their college facebook groups which will have a group specifically designated for buying and selling textbooks. Since many of those students have taken the same classes before, it is likely that someone will have the book and want to pass it off. You can then exchange when you are on campus. Saves the hassle of shipping and all that.
I second what @shawnspencer said.
Occasionally a course requires that you buy a book that comes along with an access code to software to be used in the class. Then you shouldn’t buy the book second hand.
If you are considering a used book with an access code that has already been used, find out if a new copy of the code can be purchased separately. Sometimes that is possible. Sometimes the only way to get the code is to buy the book new.
Getting books online is pretty much the future and I have never had any issues with it. The only thing is if you rent a book online, you will have to remember to ship it back (they send you a free shipping label) before the deadline or you will be charged a late fee. So if you are renting you have to make sure the deadlines line up to when your semester generally ends. Online books are significantly cheaper than ones from the bookstore and there are even e-books. Used books are a good option to as for most classes there is no reason to get a brand new book.
Something else that I used frequently when I was a college student was this system called interlibrary loan. My school’s library allowed me to get any book from a library across the country. They’d ship it and I could check it out for the semester from the library. It usually only took a couple of days, but I would do it early. The great thing about this is that for many of classes that required multiple books, it was an easy way to get them for free with pretty much guaranteed availability. Sometimes they would even have textbooks, which was amazing because those things were expensive – but sometimes only the earlier editions. Check to see if his college has a similar policy. I saved hundreds of dollars with this method.
I always ordered my kids textbooks online once they had the ISBN number. I would by used when possible. Saved a lot that way. Amazon books, at least at the time, allowed you to return books to them, even if you didn’t buy them from them, for the price they were offering. You were given a credit that you could use to buy the next semesters books. Alibris also has new and used textbooks online. I used to have a list of online book stores where I could compare prices and shipping costs and sometimes bought from several of them a semester.
You really do need the ISBN number, because it reflects the particular version the prof will work off of, sometimes the latest. That’s the easiest, surest way to have the textbook the prof wants you to use.
Sometimes, there is almost no difference between one version and another. But I never wanted my kids to find out the hard way that something important ws altered or missing.
Mostly, mine rented from an online supplier. They used Chegg initially. At some point, the bookstore facilitated rentals and they could drop them off at therere, at the end. Much less expensive to rent. The books you need to buy and keep are those you’ll refer to through all the years of college.
As others have said rent/buy used through Amazon and a couple of other known vendors for college books.The descriptions of how worn out or marked up the books are have been accurate. I will pay more for a cleaner book but usually very surprised of how great the books actually are. Also now lots of schools have a copy of the books as part of their curriculum. So no need to buy any books depending on the class. Since it seems all class homework is online even though he had the hard cover books just doing the homework and going to class seemed to be enough.
Yeah I was told about the ISBN number but figured it wouldn’t apply to used books. @shawnspencer - Agreed. Getting anything pretty much online is the future. Guess I’ll check out Amazon for now and go from there. Thanks for the info guys. Really appreciate the help here. Thx!
You can later sell them on Amazon or other sources as well (college bookstores will often buy back their books too).
Yep…my kid had a running textbook account with Amazon. She bought books, and she sold books. It was easy peasy.
I’m going to make the same plea here I’ve made elsewhere–if it is a reading-based class, like for instance, freshman comp (what I teach) make sure the student has the book before classes start. Every semester, students tell me they waited to order the book to “see if we were going to use it”–my classes are totally based on the reading. Students who start behind because they’re waiting for the book to show up are only hurting themselves.
/rant over. 
I let my kids handle buying books for their classes. I felt like I would be meddling too much if I even offered. They managed to figure it out, and found good deals, often on-line. One time my older son accidentally sold back a book he was renting, but it all got sorted out in the end.
S just finished freshmen yr and rented all of his books online. Very inexpensive (literally saver several hundred dollars). However, I told him that he should “invest” in purchasing the books for his major as he might need them to reference things later.
I bought all my kid’s text books for high school so I just continued to do the same for college. Both kids went to schools that use Barnes and Noble. Here’s the process I used:
Then decisions can be made as to whether to
I have never yet found a book cheaper through Barnes and Noble than I can through Amazon or Amazon marketplace.
Books that have longevity I buy new from Amazon or Amazon marketplace. The key in the marketplace is to look at the number of sales the user has in the past and what their reviews are like.
Be aware that orders through Amazon Marketplace may take weeks to ship, so it’s not always an option last-minute. Also, multiple purchases from the same seller can save on shipping charges.
Also note - if you use the service many bookstores provide to have the books shipped to the bookstore, it can be a madhouse the first day or two with so many students going to pick up their books.
Bear in mind this isn’t like most high schools where books are the property of the school. Students are responsible for buying books themselves, and then can do whatever they want with them afterwards. With the books my kids choose not to keep, we usually bring them in boxes to a local used book store that gives us a decent amount for them. I could get more if I sold them on Amazon but I’m not that motivated.