<p>Online, or as they state - "they have the lowest prices guaranteed!" ?</p>
<p>buying them online used is the cheapest. try bigwords.com</p>
<p>if you want to buy from the bookstores, then TIS generally has cheaper books and a rewards card system, but all 3 are equally expensive compared to amazon or half.com.</p>
<p>The way to get things cheapest:</p>
<p>First, don’t buy anything in advance. I thought I was smart, buying textbooks on Amazon during the summer before I got there; half the textbooks I bought I didn’t need, because they only had ‘recommended’ supplementary material. Don’t go looking to buy anything until the professor explicitly says it’s needed.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, often textbooks are packaged with online subscriptions that are required… a clever way to force you to use the local book system.</p>
<p>Things are cheap at the Illini Book Exchange (hxxp://<a href=“http://www.illinibookexchange.com/”>www.illinibookexchange.com/</a>); I would look there first. After that, I’d look on Amazon.</p>
<p>As a last resort, I’d go to one of the three bookstores in Chambana… they’re all roughly the same price.</p>
<p>Amazon
alibris
abe books (watch out for international versions. i buy them, but it might not match up page number wise)</p>
<p>the thing is amazon takes a long time for books to ship and also U of I has sent me an application to already pre-order textbooks before coming to campus. So what should I do?</p>
<p>you won’t need those books for at least a month anyway. it all depends on how much money you’re interested in saving.</p>
<p>so should I still pre-order from the illini bookstore textbooks to have ready for this fall?</p>
<p>listen to saturn (especially try out the bookexchange) and no need to preorder 
wait and see what the professor suggest. Most courses the books are barely used so it would be a waste of money.</p>
<p>chegg.com, amazon.com or even the textbook exchange. They are all really great. I always rent mine unless I really want to keep them to help with something else. TIS and ILLINI BOOKSTORE are nice too but look up prices before you go to the store.</p>