Best Places to Purchase Textbooks for Students

By Tom Tessin, on March 15, 2010

As a college student, we all know how expensive it is to buy just about anything in our daily lives.  From our daily meals, to our clothing, how the heck are we supposed to afford all of this?  With student loan and credit card debt reaching an all time high per student, I wanted to give you college students some pointers that you can use, in order to save on your textbooks.  Honestly, you can use this strategy on just about any purchase.

Photo by Here In Van Nuys via Flickr

Get your ISBN / Textbook title

Since you want to purchase the right book, it’s absolutely essential that you grab the ISBN.  You don’t want to solely rely on the title, because you’re soon going to find out that there will be many volumes, and editions that can throw you off.  You will most likely get your textbook title the first week of class, or if some professors are on top of their game, you can get it a few weeks before.  It never hurts to e-mail them for this information.

#1 – Start with the library

Right when you get the textbook title, you’re gold.  Rush to your local library, especially the college one first.  You’ll be amazed at how many textbooks they have in their collection.  This is a great way to get it for nothing.  All you will need to do is keep checking it out, when you want to re-new it.   I’ve done this for about 15-20% of my books.  Again, the key here is to make sure that you get to the library before anyone else, because a lot of people know about this.

#2 – Rent it!

The textbook rental market is a new thing in this decade, but many students seem to enjoy it.  You can rent out the book for X amount of time, and return it once your semester is up.  There are some good deals, and there are also some bad ones as well.  For example, my Math book would have cost me $72 used on Amazon, but I could rent it for the quarter for only $26 on Chegg.  Places like Chegg.com, and others are a great place to start to see what you can rent your particular book for.

#3 – Buy used

eBay isn’t really going to be a goldmine for textbooks, since students only buy at particular points in the season.  Instead, you’re going to want to check out websites such as Amazon.com, as well as Half.com.  When you search for your book, you can notice that they have a used section.  The used books are always 50-70% off.  There’s nothing wrong with used books.  On occasion, you may find some tear marks, as well as highlighter marks, but any good seller will tell you exactly what’s wrong with it.

#4 – If in doubt – try the bookstore

I absolutely hate the college bookstore.  They are just absolutely insane when it comes to pricing their books.  I can find the books that they sell for almost 80% off online.  The reason that I say that you should try the bookstore is because you can find used books there as well.  Sometimes they are a deal, while other times they aren’t.  It’s all going to depend on the book, college, and the pricing.

#5 – Sell in the end

If you do decide to purchase your books, and you don’t want them at the end of your semester, try selling your used textbooks on Amazon or Half.  You will most likely get 80% of your money back.  I would only do this though if you’re not going to need the book for reference in the future.

With a little effort, and work, it’s really not that hard to save on your textbook purchases.  The Internet is a great thing, and take it to your advantage.  By implementing these tips, I can almost guarantee you that you can save over 50%!  Good luck!

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Tom Tessin runs a student blog that has over 500+ uniquely written articles catering to everything college!

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