Whether you’re a freshman in college or in your last year of grad school, chances are your heart nearly stopped when you saw the price of your course textbooks. But thanks to technological advances in today’s society, the options students have today compared to 10+ years ago when I was in school (or even only 3 years ago!) provide many ways to significantly reduce textbook expense.
Below, you will find three ways to save big on textbooks and a handful of websites you can check out. I checked their Better Business Bureau records and looked at online complaint boards, and I feel comfortable sharing them with you. I could not find a textbook company that was free from BBB complaints – they all had some. I looked at the volume and nature of complaints in order to make a decision about whether I’d share the brand with you. But as always, you should do your own due diligence.
Buy Physical Books Online
This is probably the first idea that comes to mind for many of you, but you can indeed save considerably by purchasing your physical books online versus paying the high list price often seen in bookstores.
Furthermore, going this route often allows you to shop through cash back sites, such as Mr. Rebates and Ebates, to earn a percentage of your purchase back. You can also use search engines like Google to search for discount coupon codes, which are frequently available, especially around the start of a new semester.
Amazon.com & Free Shipping
The web’s top online retailer, Amazon.com, sells new or used textbooks. You can find steep discounts on textbooks, plus, when you are finished with a textbook, Amazon will buy it back giving you up to 60% back along with free return shipping. You will be paid the value you are owed back via an Amazon Gift Card.
You can save on shipping costs, both for textbooks and anything else you buy from Amazon, by signing up for a free Amazon Student account. With it you get one free year of Amazon Prime shipping benefits. This includes unlimited free two-day shipping on textbooks and millions of other items with no minimum purchase required. All you need to do is provide the name of your school and your major at sign up.
Rent Your Textbooks
Textbook rental is a particularly beneficial way to save on textbooks for some as you don’t have to worry about selling your textbooks when you are finished with them. Plus, shipping is often (if not always) free both ways – the books will be shipped to you free and you can return the books for free using a prepaid shipping label. You can save as much as 70-90% on your textbooks by renting them.
Below are a few websites you can check out that offer textbook rentals. I mention multiple sites because you may want to price compare a particular title between them to ensure you get the best value:
Sites like these allow you to choose how many days you would like to rent the book, most commonly using a period of 60, 90 or 130 days, though other durations may be available depending on the site.
Use e-Textbooks
With the growing popularity of eBooks and electronic reading devices, a couple of popular companies have begun to offer electronic versions of textbooks, which you can download and read on your Kindle or even an iPhone or iPod Touch.
Amazon
Amazon has recently hopped on the bandwagon by offering almost 30,000 eTextbooks in its Kindle Store. The selection isn’t as broad as Barnes & Noble, but I anticipate it will expand in the near future. Though the books in the Kindle Store are intended to be read on a Kindle, you can download one of Amazon’s free kindle reading apps to read them on your iPhone, Windows PC, Mac, BlackBerry, iPad or Android.
Barnes & Noble
Earlier this year, Barnes & Noble launched a free NOOKstudy app for PCs and Macs, which allows you to view eTextbook downloads on your computer. There are over 1 million eBooks and eTextbooks for you to choose from along with 1 million free eBooks. Plus, you can get a free 7-day trial of an eTextbook to see if this method is for you.
CourseSmart
CourseSmart is an eTextbook rental service. You look up the title or ISBN of a book you want, then it gets added to your online bookshelf for the duration of your rental. You can read online using your computer or they have free apps for Android and Apple products; you can download books for offline reading as well. You can try this service before purchasing using their free trial, which is a one chapter preview, for any title.
Also, some cases college bookstores sell eTextbooks and students visit CourseSmart.com with a redemption code to gain access to the book.
CengageBrain
In addition to renting physical textbooks, CengageBrain has a selection of eTextbooks as well. The eBooks are read in their proprietary reader and, unless you are reading on an iPad, you have to be connected to the internet to read your book; their reading app for the iPad alllows for offline reading.
Textbook Sites to Avoid
The websites I shared above with you are only the ones I recommend for you to check out. But while researching a plethora of textbook sites, I found very poor online reviews and/or a huge number of Better Business Bureau (BBB) complaints – one of these companies had 373 BBB complaints in the last 3 years. Some are A+ rated by the BBB even with 85+ complaints, but I wouldn’t personally want to do business with a company that has so many registered complaints. I am only including the following list of websites so you know which ones I checked out, but would avoid:
- Chegg.com
- Textbooks.com
- CollegeBookRenter.com
- BookByte.com
- eCampus.com
Your turn: What other textbook saving tricks do you have up your sleeve?
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About Carrie Rocha
I actually know someone who is a quarter ahead of me and we share books-He usually gets them from Amazon.com and then I pay him half of what he paid for them-it works and saves lots for both of us!
I just started a grad program and the books are a significant expense. I have gotten a few titles on my kindle and I have been pleased with them, as well as the lower cost.
I think half price books will also check on up to 2 titles per phone call and they may have some of these textbooks. Worth a phone call. A couple more sites we’ve used are: bookfinder.com Alibris.com Abe.com or Abebooks.com and there are also sites that list multiple books at different websites so you can compare prices on several sites at once. If you have the ISBN # for the book, you should be good to go for using these other sites/resources.
I use half.com and save a ton vs. the stores. I can usually sell them back on half.com and get virtually the same amount. I have even made money!
Half.com is part of ebay.
Definitely look for coupon codes when purchasing online! e.g., retailmenot.com
I don’t typically pay more than $50 per textbook – what I do is I type in the textbook specific ISBN number into Google and click on the shopping tab. That typically shows the lowest amount you would pay for a book – which, for me, is usually off of Ebay. You just have to be careful that you are purchasing the correct version – which is where the ISBN number is useful.
I cannot recommend half. com enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Like Rick said, I have also purchased all of my textbooks on Half (an eBay company) and was usually able to sell them for about what I paid, and in rare cases, actually made money! Super easy, fast, and reliable way to get textbooks!
i lose more than gain on chegg.com
Being a student and buying all these huge, expensive books has been a pain. Last semester I started using Chegg.com to rent my textbooks and could’nt believe how much I ended up saving! When I sent my textbooks back I also recieved a coupon code to put towards Fall semester.
The best part about Chegg besides the savings was that everytime you rent a book they plant a tree :)