<p>So I thought I'd start a thread about the best places to find cheap textbooks. Any ideas?</p>
<p>There have been many threads on this topic. I will give you a simple three places:</p>
<p>Amazon.com, Half.com, your local college used books in the bookstore</p>
<p>Since I asked this question, I have found this: </p>
<p>Where</a> To Buy & Rent Textbooks Online | myUsearch blog</p>
<p>It's a pretty comprehensive list with a lot of places I've never heard of.</p>
<p>this is definitely a very repetitive thread, but from the prices ive looked at and what i read, half.com or amazon are the best</p>
<p>The best place to buy text books is mid summer(3 weeks ago) on the amazon market place.</p>
<p>Anyone ever use Chegg book rentals? It seems a little high..</p>
<p>Agreed. $30 seems a bit steep for borrowing a used book to use for a semester. Especially since if you buy a used one and then sell it, you can usually lower your expense to just shipping and handling.</p>
<p>Compare</a> Prices on New & Used Textbooks, Cheap Textbooks - GetTextbooks.com</p>
<p>I've found that site to be pretty good at searching most of the major places to buy books from online. It even tells you if it's an international, used, or normal edition (though it's not always perfectly right).</p>
<p>use bookfill</p>
<p>all you do is put your books in and it searches for the people selling them on amazon and half.com. it does all the work for you, i use it and its really easy. i got my books (like 12) for $300 as compared to the $600 i would've had to pay for the same used books from the bookstore.</p>
<p>There are a ton of websites to buy books out there and some are better than others. But, my problem is selling my book and I found a website called skoolboy.com where I can list my book for free and only pay a small fee. Its a new website but i think its a cool site.</p>
<p>go on ebay!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>last book i bought was a Biology book 2008 ed costed 165 retail in books store I got it for like 66 bucks </p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>yay me. check ebay and amazon and always look on craigs list for desperate people!</p>
<p>If you have time, look for international editions that are the same. You can really save (it is astounding) and reflects structural issues in the worldwide book market. But you need a lead time to get them from overseas.</p>
<p>My D conducted a little experiment to prove the difference in cost between bookstore (that sells alot of used books) and on-line purchasing. She priced all of her books at the Uni bookstore while there for SOAR, then went online to hunt out the best deals. Here is what she found:</p>
<p>Used paperbacks for English/Humanities classes were about the same price between the two sources, once shipping and tax were added in (think Huck Finn, Aristotle, etc). It probably isn’t worth the effort to search for these online unless you can add them to a textbook order.</p>
<p>Textbooks were 40-80% cheaper online. She did find that she had to really read the descriptions carefully and e-mail the seller to get good answers about edition and condition. Prices ranged widely from online seller to seller. </p>
<p>Used Study Guides costing $40+ at the bookstore could be found for less than $5 online. </p>
<p>You HAVE to check the selling history of each seller. Abebooks, textbook.com, etc. are sites where small sellers offer their books - a seller with questionable history is not worth the risk of getting an incorrect edition/not getting the book.</p>
<p>Cheap books go quickly online. If you find a great price and are satisfied the seller is legit, grab it. It won’t be available for long. She missed out on a couple for bargains because she decided to look around some more before “pulling the trigger.”</p>
<p>The one problem she found as an OOS student was that the uni bookstore would not provide booklists, preferring to have you reserve your books by course/section number. She had to e-mail every professor to get the lists from them. This took time (mostly waiting for replies), but was a good way to introduce herself and show interest in the class.</p>
<p>dont use abebooks.com i got scammed once</p>
<p>bigwords.com</p>
<p>sometimes the bookstore price is surprisingly cheaper than any online price, but that is a rare case</p>
<p>honestly i love buying my books online and i have never had an issue, the biggest problem is the fact that there are so many textbooks sites online these day, your best option to save time is use a site like this</p>
<p>[Class</a> Alert - College Textbook Search - New, Used, International and Rental](<a href=“http://myclassalert.com/books]Class”>http://myclassalert.com/books)</p>
<p>they index all the online stores showing you the best deal, and the total price already includes shipping!!</p>
<p>Buy new from Amazon, keep the book in good condition, and then sell back to Amazon at end of semester. I’ve found doing that is cheaper than renting from my college bookstore, buying used, etc.</p>
<p>Although this mainly applies to books in the 70-80 dollar range; you’ll generally get around 40 back making the cost only 30-40/book.</p>
<p>This is the only place you need to go to for cheapest textbooks:
[Compare</a> textbook prices on new and used college textbooks](<a href=“http://www.allbookstores.com/]Compare”>http://www.allbookstores.com/)</p>
Usually one of Amazon, Chegg, and ValoreBooks will have the best price.