Cutting the Expense of Buying Textbooks

A college education is becoming more expensive by the day. With the rising price of tuition, textbook prices are also quickly rising as well. Here are a few tips for saving money when buying the needed textbooks for each of your classes.

There are several outlets for college level textbooks. The college bookstore is the most obvious, but it will probably be the most expensive resource too. So, look around and plan ahead for this major purchase as it is easy to spend upwards of $500.00 for one semesters worth of books.

First of all, start planning for the textbook purchases early. Once you (or your student) have registered for classes, you can start working to get those textbooks. With a schedule of your classes in hand, check to see if you can get the following from the college bookstore: The full title of the textbook(s), the author and/or editor, the ISBN and whether the book is required, suggested or optional. If you can't get the information from the college bookstore, try requesting the information -in the form of a course syllabus-from the instructor of the class.

Once you have the necessary textbook information in hand, you can go to work searching for bargains. Get the price of each book at the college bookstore. Make sure to ask for New Book and Used Book prices. I would almost always buy a used book if available. They will cost considerably less than the new book and will give you the same information.

Once you have your price reference list, check out some of the larger online bookstores: Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon, Half.com and the like. You may find used books through individual sellers at both Barnes and Noble and Amazon. If you should happen to find one that you feel is a good price, by all means order it immediately. Most of the individual sellers on these sites most likely have just a few copies (or even just one copy) of the text and when they are gone, they are gone. Just an example: I lucked up on a Differential Equations text that I needed for class a couple of years ago. The New Book Price was $115. The Used Book price was $80. I was able to buy it online from a seller at Amazon.com for just $20.00. In addition, I was able to search around and find study guides and a solutions manual for around $10.00 each. So, I got the required text and the two optional texts for half the price of the used textbook at the bookstore.

If you do find a book at a good price from an individual seller early on in your search, using Media Mail for the shipping will save a good amount of money on the postage. Media Mail is subject to several rules and regulations -you can check these at the United States Postal Service Website. If the book is fairly small, you might also ask if the seller would be willing to ship it in a Flat-Rate Priority Envelope. In either case, ask for delivery confirmation. I like to insure my purchases too -just to be safe. The flat rate priority shipping was just $4.60 the last time I checked. If the book won't fit in the Flat-Rate envelope, I would definitely have it shipped Media Mail -Priority Shipping can get pretty expensive.

Now, on to phase two of the book search. Suppose you were unsuccessful at finding a reasonably priced book on either of the sites discussed above -it is time to look at other sources. One source is e-bay. I have heard people say that if you can't find it anywhere else, try e-bay. With e-bay, you may have to get into a bidding game with other buyers. For textbooks, I really like it when there is a "Buy-it-now" option. This allows you to purchase the textbook without having to go through the bidding. In the event there are others wanting the book and it is on a true auction, it can't hurt to place your bid. But, be sure to keep watch on your auction. You don't want to be outbid in the last few minutes. Again, use the shipping advice that I gave earlier.

You may still be searching for a textbook after going through all of these steps. In this case, if you live near your school make a visit and check out the bulletin boards all over campus. Many times, students will place flyers up to sell their used textbooks. If you see the book you need listed on a flyer, take down the information and call the seller. You just might have your textbook dilemma solved.

In the event that you were not able to find all of your books as lower prices, you still have the college bookstore and other full-price bookstores to work with. While I like finding all my books at a price much less than regular retail, I still consider it a success if I find three books as a considerably reduced price and still have to get the last two from the bookstore. With textbooks running $100.00 or more per book, you still have considerable savings.