College Textbooks: 7 Ways to Save Money

Where can you buy cheap college textbooks?
With textbooks priced in the stratosphere, students across the country scramble each semester to find cheap textbooks for college.

The average student during the last school year spent about $1,122 on textbooks. Before you shop for college textbooks, here are my seven tips to find the cheapest textbooks around:

1. Comparison shop.

You can use BIGWORDS.com and Campusbooks.com, which are textbook aggregators, that can direct you to college textbook sellers are offering the lowest prices. BIGWORDS, for instance, aggregates all the web's options on any book, whether new, used or rentals. Two popular places for textbooks are Half.com and Amazon.

2. Use old editions.

You will often be able to pick up some old editions of textbooks super cheap and sometimes for pennies on the dollar. The content in the 5th edition of a chemistry book versus the 7th edition could be inconsequential. Ask your professors if you aren't sure about buying an old textbook.

3. Consider renting textbooks.

The big gorilla in the textbook rental market is Chegg. Other competitors include BookRenter.com and CampusBookRental.com. ValoreBooks offers free shipping for rentals over $20. Some campus bookstores are also renting textbooks to students.

Renting won't always be cheaper than buying a used copy -- particularly if you can resell the college book, but it can be a godsend if you're strapped for cash. Check prices.

4. Look for coupons.

Before you buy textbooks online, see if you can find a promotional coupon. Check out CouponWinner.com, PromoCodes.com and PromotionalCodes.com.

5. Share a book.

My daughter, who is a college senior, has done this in the past. She's shared textbooks with one or two of her friends and saved big bucks.

6. Try international editions of books.

According to Textbooksrus.com, it's possible to save 75% on international editions of textbooks.

7. Look for books before school starts.

According to a new federal law, textbook publishers must provide students with the list of required textbooks during registration. You'll have more options if you don't wait until you arrive at school to order.

Lynn O'Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also write a college blog for TheCollegeSolutionBlog.

[SamanthaPenkar]

I think postyourbook.com should be on here, they are one of those websites where students can buy and sell textbooks to each other, and they actually have users..

[CashCowCouple]

Really good stuff! I applied most of those tips throughout college. Another tip is to simply wait until classes begin to buy books. I used to email teachers asking if the text was necessary. Some would say no. The rest of the time, I would feel out class for the first week before buying the textbook.

I wrote other tips at: http://cashcowcouple.com/frugality/dirt-cheap-textbooks/

[AppleJeans]

FindersCheapers.com has a popular textbook search engine that allows you to search by ISBN, author, edition, publisher etc and compare used, new and rental pricing. It is a good choice for taking your class schedule and quickly coming up with a list of the lowest prices available online. You can run your campus bookstore webpage in one browser window and FindersCheapers in another to figure out how much you might save by buying online versus in the bookstore. I find the online prices to generally be better, but not always.

[SunnyShines]

I usually stop by at http://textbooks.org/ and compare prices. If you have new books by next school year you could also resell them, so it's best to take care of your textbooks.