5 Book Buying Tips

With the vast majority of college campuses opening their doors again for the fall semester just this past week, it’s a sure bet that one of the major issues on students’ minds will be how they can save on book purchases. This is something we remember quite well, walking into that bookstore the first day of classes and trying to get out without spending an arm and a leg.  

 

Some students – English majors, especially – will have it easy since they really only need to buy paperback novels, but there are plenty of academic programs in college that demand you spent sometimes up to $800 per semester on books. Add that up over a full-length education and you’re looking at over $6,000 spend on books – most of which you probably won’t need after finals, anyway – alone.

 

The good news is that with a little foresight and planning you don’t need to blow your savings on textbooks this semester. We’ve outlined some really effective practices in our article library already. Here are a few more:

If you know that you’re going to need a particular book, don’t wait. Get out to the bookstore early and pick up a used copy at a discounted price. Used textbooks don’t always run in high supply because professors like to use the newest editions available, so wasting time on getting to the low-priced stock may result in you having to dish out some extra cash.

Check out ebooks.com, netlibrary.com and coursesmart.com before shelling out for a hard copy of that high-priced textbook. E-books are books without all the paper and binding, so they’re less expensive than their more traditional counterpart. What’s more, you download e-books onto your computer, so you don’t have to lug around those 800-page science text books from class to class anymore.

Have a friend who took Economics 211 a year before you? Check with them to see if they still have the book and offer up a trade of either another book or some cash. Odds are your friend will be willing to sell a book to you at a more reasonable price than the school bookstore.

Always an important step, you can lower the final cost you incur for a book by a good margin if you take the time to sell your books back at the end of each semester. Say you get $40 back for your chemistry textbook that cost $80 originally. Now things aren’t looking so bad.

Sure, this sounds like kind of a counter to our first tip, but they’re actually quite different.  A lot of times, professors will put books on your syllabus that you don’t need. Maybe you read 15 pages out of a 400 page book that costs way too much. Sometimes professors will even put books on your syllabus and deem them references; you won’t even be required to read from them! It’s not uncommon for students to wait until that particular book comes up in the syllabus before they go out and buy it. That way you can figure out if it’s a worthwhile pickup.