Please help - my child is a freshman and of course, it is time to buy the required text books. Can anybody offer any advice as to where and how to get a good deal on text books? He has take some initiative and is renting(?) some! We also heard about www.directtextbook.com , and Amazon of course. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Chegg,com We have used them for years 
Just went through this and here’s what we found:1) Bookstore-most expensive for renting, used OR new. 2)Amazon, fast but next most expensive for most, but not all, books. They offer new, used or rentals, ebooks in some cases. 3)Chegg.-cheaper than Amazon in every case. Also offers rental, new or used, and some ebooks. More importantly, they offer online viewing of books you’ve bought prior to hard-copy delivery as well as online access to problem sets and answers of some texts and online tutoring. 4)Found half.com too late for most purchases, but will START there next semester. Beat everybody else we looked at by $15 for the lowest price, including shipping. A coupon for 10% off made it even cheaper. This is part of Ebay, so you may not always find what you need, but if you’re looking to purchase and not rent, start there.
Something we learned-there are mixed opinions on whether to buy before class or after it starts. Make sure that if you buy prior to class that the book is actually needed. Our bookstore listed two (luckily mass-market and affordable) books as “required” but they were nothing of the sort. Also check on the access codes-some profs require them, others do not. Texts are always cheaper without an access code, but the codes cannot be reused and can’t usually be found in used books.
I actually just purchased my textbook for a business class I’m taking at a local community college at Amazon; not a HUGE savings, but I think I saved about $30-$40 after taxes. Plus, I got free shipping! Chegg.com cost about the same.
Our bookstore states they will match Amazon’s price on purchases and rentals and encourages rentals.
Amazon prime textbook rental
Our bookstore claims it “prices competitively” with Amazon and Chegg. If by “competitively” they mean “slightly higher than everyone else” then they are correct.
It’s an omnibus search engine. Searches all the other search engines. I love books and have spent much dinero there. Saved a good amount for the kid too – literally hundreds vs. the campus bookstore each semester. We use this in combo with Amazon prime. Rentals are good too (kids really don’t want to save that huge book anyway).
Colleges usually give out the ISBN. Try bookfinder before looking elsewhere.
Lake Jr. is a STEM student, where the cost of new textbooks border on extortion. We heard about International Editions and ultimately he purchased several texts of those kind. He was lucky because in every case the Int’l edition was IDENTICAL to the U.S. edition. By my rough calculation, he purchased nearly $2,000 of required textbooks for approximately 800 bucks!!! He also purchased earlier versions (a.k.a. ‘last year’s edition’) of required textbooks, when the professor said that the prior edition would be fine for class.
This should help.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/spendingandborrowing/better-than-the-bookstore-best-sites-for-college-textbooks/ss-BBv9l3X#image=11
I have found a number of used books though abebooks.com, alibris, also amazon. We have also rented books through amazon prime.
I google the ISBN to see the cheapest source