Every semester we write a post on how to save money on text books and in my personal opinion the best way to save is through a combination of e-books, eBay, Amazon, and your books stores used books. So, below I have compiled some of the top ways to save. Many have been reviewed in past posts and some have not. Hopefully you will find the compilation of techniques useful.
While reading books online is not always the most comfortable it is the cheapest. I would highly recommend buying all the books you can in electronic format if they are free. It also makes taking notes easier since you can copy and paste excerpts. The first two recommendations are for E-Books.
1) Book Yards has 16,045 E-books, 40,335 external web links, 4,197 news & blogs links, 384 videos, 376 E-book links and access to hundreds of online libraries for your reading pleasure. All of which is free.
2) The Education-Portal has done a review of the top 40 places to find full length texts online (all free). In addition they have reviewed the top 9 places to find free audio books. For those of you with a walk or ride to class it might be useful to listen to the reading you forgot to finish.
3) If you cannot find the free version of the book you are looking for you may want to look into buying the E version. Often times the electronic version is cheaper and you will not have to pay for delivery. However, I would shop around before making a choice. Amazon.com and eBooks.com are two great locations for finding online books.
4) Next on the places to find cheaper books are the online used re-sellers. It is best to shop around when looking for expensive text books. However, when it comes to those $10 paper backs for your Philosophy or Lit class make sure you remember to weigh in shipping because sometimes those are not worth buying online. Also, make sure you pay attention to when your books will be arriving and when your first quizzes and tests are. It’s great to save money but not at the expense of grades.
a. Half.com or eBay.com
b. amazon.com
c. Abebooks.com
5) There is also Affordabook which will query the book you are searching for and tell you which of the above locations has the best price. The only problem is that sometimes Afford A Book cannot find your book on the others websites. If Afford A Book cannot find it make sure you go to the site and double check. Also, Afford A Book does not take the quality of the book into consideration in it’s query.
6) The campus book store (also known as overpriced, marked up, hell). When going to your campus bookstore make sure to check if there is a USED version available. Just because you are going to the book store doesn’t mean you have to buy a brand new version.
7) Lastly, check with your professor. Sometimes they can put the texts on reserve at the library for the class to use and sometimes they know of other public libraries which you can borrow it from. Also, if the publishers have just released a new version of the text book you can ask your professor for the older version of the syllabus. This way you can buy USED books without getting off track and lost in the page numbers. Most of the time the book content and class structure do not change and professors are more than happy to help out students in need.
