Mashable.com recently ran an article on 9 Sites to Save You Big on College Textbooks.
My son is finishing up college with one class left to take (YEAH!) so I decided to put these money-saving college textbook sites to the test and hopefully save Nick a few bucks to boot.
More Book Buying (Renting, Downloading) Choices
In my day we only had 2 choices, new or used and we had very limited choices where we could buy either. While the price of new textbooks has skyrocketed the number of money saving options for today’s frugal college student have also grown. The internet has expanded student’s choices and made their options more interesting by allowing them to rent or go digital (buying or renting book bytes as well).
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Yes, the market for college books is definitely crazy. You can buy new for $104 or $48, rent for $11 or $53, and go used for as much as $84 or as little as $7. It’d take a math major to figure this all out (or a quantum physicist!).
By the way, since the above table shows only one eBook listing, I thought I’d do a little head to head comparison between the 2 most popular eBook formats. Below is a comparison of rent vs. own for the 2 most popular digital devices:
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What’s a Savvy Textbook Deal Hunting Student To Do?
The best thing to do is to pull out his list of ISBN numbers (easiest in making comparisons and making sure you have the right text and edition), fire up her browser, load up the list of likely best saving sites and go shopping. You may find better deals on some sites than others. You may want to rent some books and buy others. New may be essential for some texts (those seminal works in your core area of study for example) and ripped, shredded and marked up may be just fine for that throw-away elective.
The important point is that you do your research, have a strategy and give yourself time to execute properly (plus 2-4 weeks for shipping!). Good luck, good shopping and have a great (school) year!
The Mashable List
The following sites were reviewed in the Mashable article. Take a quick read of it for a more detailed evaluation and when crafting your textbook shopping strategy. This list provides direct links to the sites mentioned:
- BookFinder.com
- Amazon.com
- AffordaBook.com
- Half.com
- Chegg.com
- CampusBookRentals.com
- AbeBooks.com
- BigWords.com
- BookRenter.com
Bonus Book Sites
You’ll notice in my comparison matrix that I included a couple of extra sites that my research uncovered:
- Neebo.com
- Skyo.com
