I'm starting college, and holy hell the books are expensive. Does anyone know of a cheaper avenue online to get these expensive items. Do you guys buy books online, get a used hardcopy, or do something else?
Ask around at your college for any used book stalls or they may have a board advertising book sales. If they're students at the college you can usually haggle them down a few dollars.
I have to buy a law book this year and it's really expensive :( Check the billboards around college and see if people are selling there old copies from last year. Best way to do it
Sign up for classes early so you have time to order from Amazon. Sometimes (actually fairly often) there's a new version that's required. In that case you're screwed. Hopefully you'll be able to sell some back at the end of the term.
i recommend going to half.com or amazon if you know what books you need . Also the school book store should have to option to buy books used. i have never recived a crappy book when going used
for me there is a bookstore off-campus that sell books for cheap as well.
Remember to SELL your books at he end of the semester
ecampus.com is pretty good from my experience, though you might want to look into renting textbooks. My school's been pushing that a lot and it seems like it's a lot cheaper.
You could try just getting books you absolutely need. I know a few people who go to the first few classes and judge how important the book is to the class then buy them. And sometimes the prices go down a little bit after school starts, cause stores jack up prices at the beginning of quarters/semesters anticipating higher sales.
Unfortunately the books I needed were about the same price online, but the Uni store sold all the ones I needed in a bundle that came with some handy study guides and online access that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.
Some colleges have book "rentals", you get the textbook for the year and if it's returned in the same condition then you get like 80-90% of your money back.
I recommend amazon, you can get free 2 day shipping if you're a student, and in my 2 instances i got both books brand new for maybe 3 bucks more than the used versions than if i bought it at barnes and nobles used.
Amazon was a winner for me, I bought most books for a significant discount from the schools bookstore. Check the used section in amazon too. You could also find people who are trading in their old books and buy them from real people.
Or you could just not buy them. I found a lot of classes that required books, but most really didn't use them. This was especially true for non-science courses. Also check your public library. Borrow books from other students.
Half Price Books. Dunno if that's a local thing or not and I'm too lazy to check, but that's where everyone I know gets theirs that doesn't just throw down for the full price ones.
@HandsomeDead said:
" I finalised my courses today and seeing that there's a book on here for $90 blew my mind. "
It blows my mind how cheap that is. I bought three books this semester and it was like $460.
I used Textbookx.com sometimes. But Amazon student gets you free Prime and textbook deals. There's a couple others but I can't bring them up in memory right now.
Renting, used section of Amazon (or any other used textbook site), and photocopying pages of the textbooks professors will often put on hold for students in the library. I went mostly with used Amazon textbooks and had to rent one book out from the college bookstore. My final total was about $200 for 7 books, which is a good deal since buying them all at full price in the bookstore would have easily been more than double that amount.
Make a few friends that are in your same field of study, ask if you can borrow their books, or buy them off of them for cheap. This cuts down on the acquisition time of these books, not having to wait for shipping, etc. Some book stores my have deals with your college too.
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