How to Buy College Textbooks at a Lesser Price Than Your College Bookstore

When it’s time to go back to college, it’s time to buy college textbooks; time to run about looking for books and time to spend hundreds of dollars. I remember back when I was a freshman, the foremost thing I spent my money on was textbooks.

Once I received my college textbook list, I visited the campus bookstore and reviewed the cost. I realized that I was going to have to literally pluck money off trees.

I called an acquaintance of mine with the hope of finding a resolution. He advised me to go and see if the professor would lend me an old version of any college textbooks I need or try to buy them from past students of the same class. The professor had parted with his past books and all the students wanted just as much as an original would cost for their used college textbooks. One of them even tried to sell his book to me for $25 more than the original price because he “had written important notes in the book and this made it more valuable” 

If you manage to find old college textbooks from a student or professor, consider yourself very lucky. My personal opinion is that the above endeavor is just not worth it.

If you want to find something of the like of a college textbook, what would you normally do? Of course! Use the internet! Yes that’s it! A little bit of time spent on the internet proved to me that this was the perfect way to go about this; I ended up with a (very diverse) list of college textbooks for prices up to a whopping 90% lower than the original price! I need not tell you, I was astounded.

I composed this list of "How to" tips to help you get similar results when shopping online for college textbooks:

• Check whether you can search the website using the ISBN number in addition to the title. There could be many books with the same title, but they always have different ISBN numbers. International Editions books are relatively cheaper than US Edition Books, but they have different ISBN. That is why it is important to search with Titles also.

• Do you really need to buy those college textbooks? If you need the books for only a short time, it’s a better idea to rent them. If you are going to rent, remember to try and find the site that offers the cheapest rental rates.

• Before you finish ordering, check the charges by calculating them yourself. If there are any extra charges you might be paying for services that you don’t really need such as overnight shipping while you’d be fine with the books delivered in a week. Don’t pay more than you have to.