Where can I buy cheap textbooks online?
Beth Nester asked:
I spend about $900 in buying books for just one semester. I want to know a good place to get cheap college books because $900 is not easy to come by. Although, I don’t want to buy books that are cheap but which I can hardly get or learn anything from. Please point me to a good place/site that you have already tried.
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I spend about $900 in buying books for just one semester. I want to know a good place to get cheap college books because $900 is not easy to come by. Although, I don’t want to buy books that are cheap but which I can hardly get or learn anything from. Please point me to a good place/site that you have already tried.
January 28th, 2011 at 4:03 am
There are some websites, like Chegg.com that allow you to rent the textsbooks you need as a fraction of the price and give free return shipping. However, I usually buy my books off Amazon.com, because people sell their books sometimes for cheaper than renting them. Also email your professors before you buy books to ask them if you can get an older edition–you’ll literally get books for $10 in some instances. The older editions usually aren’t very different fromt he current ones, and a lot of the times teacher’s could care less what edition you use. Hope that helps!
Nucci
January 30th, 2011 at 12:22 am
Amazon.com is AMAZZZING! They ship your books fast and you can usually find really great deals on used books. Last semester I priced my books at the bookstore (used books only) and it was going to cost $720. I found all the same books on amazon and spent about $310 (including shipping). Cait
February 1st, 2011 at 10:01 am
Personally, I’ve had the best results from Amazon.com - good prices and low shipping, and you can type the ISBN number in so you get the exact same textbook. No worrying about getting an older edition or anything.
Half.com is also a great one too.
Good luck, and hope it helps! Lisa C
February 2nd, 2011 at 7:01 am
There are many site to find the best deals on textbooks… My university student body started this site:
This site compares textbook prices across the internet to find the cheapest used and rental textbooks. Also this site compares buyback prices offered for the books. Many people think amazon is the best place, but you will see the comparison prices..
Most people now are using this site at my university. I hope this helps. Good Luck Poorstudent
February 3rd, 2011 at 12:06 am
I recommend this site
T_Swagger
they have great deals and give a percentage back on your purchase
February 4th, 2011 at 8:02 pm
It’s good that you are looking online for your books instead of going to the campus bookstore. This will save you a lot of money. The only problem with shopping online is that there are literally hundreds of sites for buying and renting textbooks. This is why I use They are a textbook search engine that searches all the online textbook retailers (including amazon, half, ebay etc) and rental sites (including chegg, bookrenter etc) to find you the best prices. You can even use them at the end of the semester to search for resellers to sell your books to. It’s pretty awesome.
Hope this helps!! J. Scott
February 6th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
You can find good places to buy books online here:
You can also rent books, which some people like. The disadvantage is you really need to be careful about protecting them, not losing them, and sending them in on time or it can cost you a lot more than buying them new. If you think you’d like to rent them, I’d recommend checking out this article:
You can also get digital textbooks. You will either download the book onto your computer or get an online subscription. Either way you will only be able to use it for one semester - you can’t keep the book forever. If you’re interested in e-books, check out this article for places to find them: Rebecca
February 9th, 2011 at 1:20 am
Definitely go the used textbook route!
There are several sites that are useful, but every site has (individual) sellers you want to avoid.
I recently read the following article which offers SEVERAL recommendations on how to SAVE money and avoid common online purchasing pitfalls.
Hope the info is helpful.
John John
February 10th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
You should buy used college textbooks at GreenTextbooks.com - Saving the Planet One Textbook at a Time GreenTextbooks.com is your online leader for finding used textbooks, DVDs, CDs. The Leader
February 13th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Another great place is Viking
February 16th, 2011 at 1:22 am
There are tons of places to buy books online, but if you want to get them cheap, you would have to purchase several books in one instance. Some give discounts if you buy in bulks. There are some sites that offer you to buy cheap textbooks but they are not exactly the books that you might need. These books may not be the ones recommended to you by your school.
What I would suggest is that instead of buying books, why not check some book renting companies like? A book renting company would surely inform you if they have in stock the exact books that you need. Renting a book usually costs around 25% of the original price of the book. That’s a huge discount. I have tried Book Renter and I know for sure that the books they lease out are in good condition.
This option would be highly useful for you if you would not be using the same book for the next semester or for the years to come. If you would be using it over and over for the next years of your college life, you should purchase one. But if not, renting textbooks can cost you about a fourth of what you usually spend. JS