<p>I'm a new freshman at the U, just moved in! I'm wondering about textbooks. The prices for the university-branded special edition textbooks are obscene. It's hard to find them through third party sites.</p>
<p>What's the cheapest way to get books? Is it worth just paying the Bookstore for convenience? I'm especially interested in CHEM 1021, PHYS 1401V, and MATH 2573H.</p>
<p>Thanks guys :)</p>
<p>freecell…Third party (Amazon, textbooks.com, half.com, etc) is the cheapest way to go but sometimes that’s not an option. Depending on the course/instructor they book may be a “U of M” specific edition that you can only get through the bookstore. It kinda stinks, but many colleges do the same thing.</p>
<p>Easiest way we found to compare prices was to go through the Enrollment link on the OneStop webpage, then click on the “Textbooks” link at the bottom of that page. It will link you to the U’s bookstore page and show you New, Used, and Rental prices for your specific textbooks (Used and Rental aren’t always options…it just depends).</p>
<p>For Amazon and other third party sellers, type in the ISBN number for the book and if it’s an edition they carry for a cheaper price you can get it there.</p>
<p>I would definitely check out the third-party sites. There a lot of online choices for used, rental, or digital download textbooks. You can Google “text book price comparison” and find sites it will give you report showing current price at all the online booksellers. This gives you information you can use to compare with the college bookstore.
One caution, if you do use an online site don’t choose the cheapest shipping which is media mail. They can take 2 to 4 weeks the media mail delivery book.</p>