Don't Pay Retail for College Text Books
The average college student is paying between $500 to $900 per semester for books. By doing a little sleuthing, we found savings as great as 87% on books needed for this semester. Before your start your search, get as much information about your text book as possible, including: Complete title, Author, Publisher, Edition Number, Year Published and ISBN number.
Here are the places we searched:
Buy used from the university bookstore and save 25%. We buy all the books at the bookstore (used whenever possible) - several weeks before classes start - then we start searching on-line using actual ISBN numbers on the books we have in hand. These books will be returned if and when we find better prices.
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CollegeBooksDirect.com 25% – 40%
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- CheapestTextBooks.com This site searches all of the other sites and helps you find the best deals around.
To save the most money, start your research as early as possible.
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Comments
GET BACK UP TO 80% ON YOUR TEXTBOOKS BY BUYING AND SELLING SMART
Textbooks are very seasonal and if you plan in advance and buy your books at a low time and sell them when they are in high demand you will be able to get back up to 80% of what you have paid. In midsummer, demand on textbooks is lowest. They will significantly drop in price. In the middle of the semester, demand is pretty low too.
You should by them online on Amazon.com, Half.com or other websites that sell textbooks. I would not recommend buying textbooks in college bookstore since you will be paying a premium even on used textbooks for the convenience of getting a book right now. You should buy a used textbook in very good or like new condition, keep it nice and you will be able to resell it for good money. Try to avoid instructor's editions and never buy books that are marked “not for resale." Most buy back companies will not purchase instructor's editions and all buyback companies will not purchase books marked "not for resale." Some people will try to sell these books to you online for cheaper. If a deal looks too good to be true, you can contact the seller to make sure it is real student edition textbook.
Sell your textbook when it is high in demand - a week or two before the next semester or quarter starts. To get the most money back, sell it online to a buy back company. They will pay to you up to 65% of the current going rate. And if you purchased it in low season, it will work out that you will get 80% or even more of what you bought it for. I sold my textbooks to http://eaglesaver.com and I have found their payout prices to be excellent. They provided me with a free shipping label that included a tracking number and there were no fees to use their service.
Cheap College Textbooks
These are all great sites and I've used almost all of them but I have another one: Chegg.com This is for renting textbooks only but I've found that they are often way cheaper than any of the used sites and often carry newer books that can't be found on half.com, etc.! But, you say, I can't turn in my textbooks for money at the end of the semester or sell them to another student. We've discovered that more often than not, the college won't take them back because they've updated them for the next year. Also shop as early as possible because the closer you get to semester starts, the higher the prices go and the less the cheaper books are available on used sites.