How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks

<p>Every year the question of where to find cheap textbooks comes up . Here is a great link to help parents and students save big bucks on textbooks!
How</a> to Find Cheaper College Textbooks - Bucks Blog - NYTimes.com</p>

<p>As a computer science major/philo & psych minor, our son rarely spent more than $80/semester for books. Biggest savings was buying earlier editions thru Amazon.</p>

<p>Thanks! We’ll need this info soon!</p>

<p>I attend a CC and the required textbook for each class is on reserve in the library. Its a good option for classes that rarely use the text, or perhaps for the “recommended” but not required additional texts.</p>

<p>I also use Amazon a lot and avoid the bookstore like the plague :)</p>

<p>half.com (associated with ebay)
bookbyte.com</p>

<p>D’s financial responsibiities in college include buying her own books (along with providing her own spending money & covering the cost of living during any unpaid internships she chooses to accept). This has made her very savvy and frugal about her textbooks - - it is astonishing, as usual, what a difference it makes when it is their money!</p>

<p>Her first year she went to the student bookstore the mninute she got to campus, wrote down all the books, ISBNs, and prices at the bookstore. Then she went online that night and looked at Amazon, B&N, and Borders. She had severl Barnes & Nobles and Borders gift cards from graduation, so she used those where possible. Bought at the best price she could find (but calculated the shipping to figure it out). Went back to the bookstore for a couple of things that were cheaper there or not easily available online. That approach worked for her, but it was a lot of work. But I think it was a good method for the first semsters or two until her gift cards were used up.</p>

<p>Then fall of soph years she tried renting from [Chegg.com:</a> Cheap Textbook Rentals. Best way to Rent Books for College](<a href=“http://www.chegg.com%5DChegg.com:”>http://www.chegg.com), and she swears by it. It is the cheapest and easiest method she has found. She says they send several e-mail reminders, so she hasn’t forgotten to send the books back on time.</p>

<p>If you have a .edu email address, Amazon will give you one year of free Prime shipping – Two-day delivery with tracking. </p>

<p>We use Amazon for D’s Ohio State, my grad school, and S’s Belmont this fall. Just check the edition carefully because previous editions will come up in the search.</p>

<p>My kiddo has seveal books that are new editions. Our best bet with those was buying on amazon. It was still less expensive than the school bookstore price.</p>

<p><a href=“http://bigwords.com/[/url]”>http://bigwords.com/&lt;/a&gt; will search for sites with the least expensive options. I also like <a href=“http://www.gettextbooks.com/[/url]”>http://www.gettextbooks.com/&lt;/a&gt; and <a href=“http://www.campusbooks.com/[/url]”>http://www.campusbooks.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Get a Barnes and Noble membership. You get an additional discount and free, fast shipping. Sometimes the B&N discounted price is less for new books than you will find for used elsewhere.
We open multiple screens and cross check the college bookstore price (used and new) with Amazon (used and new) , B&N (used and new), Chegg’s (rental). </p>

<p>If your child’s school uses Follett to manage their bookstore, Follett is rolling out its own rental service this year.</p>

<p>Follett:
rent-a-text.com</p>

<p>Oldest got lots of books from Powells’, nice cause for her
Freshman Hum 110 class(year long and required), it included at least 18 books and that was just for fall semester.
(Although for many books the Reed bookstore actually had good pricing).</p>

<p>We also found texts through amazon private sellers (even brand new biology textbooks- I think they were overstock)</p>

<p>Reed also tried out the Kindle for texts last year, haven’t heard how that has worked out yet.</p>

<p>We run the isbn number through google and a bunch of sites will come up. Dealoz compares prices at several sites.</p>

<p>So far we have purchased through Amazon (marketplace for used), half.com, ebay, and textbooks.com. We have only had bad experience where a book never showed and the seller was unresponsive - half.com refunded the money to us and then went after the seller to get it back from him.</p>

<p>We save hundreds of dollar every semester buying on the internet.</p>

<p>If you’re looking for cheap college books, you have to check out [Cheap</a> Textbooks, College Textbook - CheapestTextbooks.com](<a href=“http://www.cheapesttextbooks.com/]Cheap”>http://www.cheapesttextbooks.com/). I used to buy used from one of the stores at UDEL until I found this site, they had every textbook I needed for this semester for like half the price. Then, you can sell them back to the stores for the same price. Can’t beat it.</p>

<p>Another useful site [AddALL</a> Used and Out of Print book search](<a href=“Buy Used Books and Out-of-Print Books Online Book Finder”>Buy Used Books and Out-of-Print Books Online Book Finder)</p>

<p>The only thing that annoys me is when you get the used books via Amazon there’s no way to speed up the shipping. They have always been really fast, but the “delivery range” always gives me pause. I would rather pay a couple of extra dollars and know it will be there in a couple of days (Amazon Prime doesn’t help since Amazon is just the broker).</p>

<p>I still saved at least 50% on my son’s books (his job after this first semester, but I did really enjoy the saving money. Maybe I will offer to do it for him one more time :-).</p>

<p>We also like</p>

<p>half.com (associated with ebay)
bookbyte.com </p>

<p>We discovered a programming gliche at bookbyte – but guess it’s fixed by now.
THey have a coupon to enter save05 (which was listed on one of those sites that shows the least expensive source for your book)…so we thought , let’s try something else but not too greedy and typed save20 in the coupon window-- and it worked! Took $20 off each book we ordered…sorry I didn’t type save50!</p>

<p>I’m sure that promocode has been fixed by now…but never know</p>

<p>The delivery range on the Amazon used sellers gives me pause, too…</p>

<p>I helped both my S’s order some books this year - the used ones ordered on Amazon sellers who offered Expedited shipping did arrive within a few days, but the time frame for delivery was almost 8 days beyond that. That did freak me (and them) out. </p>

<p>All books ordered on Half.com arrived within the delivery estimates…and all of them offered Tracking numbers, which was nice.</p>