Finding Cheap College Textbooks

College is expensive and textbooks add to your expenditures every semester. So how can you find cheap textbooks? Thankfully there are many options available to you.

Most students buy their books from local bookstores. Your school bookstore tends to be the most expensive. For a lot of new students this is the most convenient way to get their books but if you can, you should avoid it. To get good deals, especially in a college town, you should shop around at different bookstores at the beginning of each semester.

The trick to buying cheap books is always to get used books. This is especially true in bookstores. Most of the time the used books they sell are in really good condition and will save you tons of cash. Of course, this is the most convenient option but certainly not the cheapest.

A lot of students will buy books and then try to sell them online to make their money back. There are always message boards and websites for schools or cities, where students go to sell books or event tickets. If you look hard enough, you will probably find one of these sites and be able to get your books from a fellow student. All you do is meet on campus and, you got your book. As a plus, you helped out someone who is just as broke as you are.

Aside from obscure school websites, you can always check your local craigslist website and if you have Facebook, you can do a search in the Marketplace and see if anyone is selling the books you're looking for. For all you know, there might be a friend who previously took the class who you can help out by buying their book off them. They might even let you borrow it. Usually students will try to make their money back when they sell their books online so they might price it comparably to what bookstores would. When there are more books for a certain class for sale, usually the price will go way down because of too much supply.

Your other options are internet stores which are great if you don't mind waiting for your book to ship. Amazon.com and half.com usually have great prices on books. And as a bonus, aside from already low prices on most books compared to your bookstore, the advantage of these sites is that you can find old editions. When books are republished, there is usually very little change in content and the prices of older editions plummet immediately. So if you buy a book that is one or two editions old you could get a $100 book for less than $10. If you're going to do this it is helpful to have someone you know in the class to make sure you are studying the correct material. But you will definitely save a lot of money.

Sometimes publishers have an ebook version of the real book. It comes with everything, and is usually cheaper than the normal edition. The only downside is that you either have to read on your computer or you have to print out tons of pages. If you can't read on the computer, this option probably is not for you because you'll just end up spending on ink and paper what you would on the regular book.

If you're looking to save, these are all the ways to do so. It's good to check out a few different places before you purchase. Even if you find a really cheap price on Facebook marketplace, you never know if there's someone selling a book for half that on Amazon.