Education is U.S. is typically quite expensive. On top of that, textbooks costs hundreds of dollars. If you are a student, I can empathize with you, since I paid my graduate education (MBA) out of my pocket. I always strived to save money, wherever I could. One such avenue was textbook purchase. Here is how I went about saving money in textbook purchase; obviously the choice was online / Internet shopping:
- School publishes textbooks few weeks before the beginning of the course. I make sure that I order the textbooks at least 3 weeks in advance for timely delivery. If school doesn't publish the textbook, I would recommend contacting your Professor regarding the same. My professors were always helpful. Make sure to get the correct edition though. Sometimes it matters a lot. [Check with Professor whether older editions would work for the course. You can find older editions at significantly lower price than the current edition.]
- Pick up the ISBN or Book Title and check out the deals at GetTextbooks.com. This website gives the list of deals and the provider.
- Choose the "trusted" provider and order it from them. I have had couple of bad experience with buyers from Half.com and other provider (I don't remember it now). It is typically few buyers in those sites, not the provider itself has issues. I never had issues with Amazon.com and its buyers.
- Remember to read few comments and check the rating of the buyer, before placing the order. Read the item description very carefully.
- Note, you will be ordering the paperback edition (not the hardcover one). While ordering the paperback edition, do NOT order the Indian or black & white edition. The paper quality is usually not good. Other eastern country editions are usually good. This will have the exact content as U.S edition, so no worries about the content.
Btw, another inexpensive source is to borrow it from friends or families. Don't be shy and, in my opinion, it is not a crime. In fact, there is nothing wrong in it. They will be glad to lend and share some financial burden from you.
I haven't sold any textbooks, as I plan to use them in future for reference purposes. But few of my schoolmates did; so, you can make some money by selling the books. If you plan to do so, then sell them immediately. Otherwise, publishers come up with new edition and old editions loose value significantly. You can sell the textbooks online at well known sites (e.g.,
Amazon.com,
Half.com, etc). Hassle free option would be to broadcast email to student aliases and find buyers within your school.
Happy reading and good luck!
I am interested to learn about other tricks that work or worked for you.
Numerous online (used) book stores and book rental are popping up and growing everyday. These Internet companies exert significant competitive pressure on the brick and mortar stores and the textbook publishers. Brick and mortar stores are affected by the inexpensive offerings from online stores. The publishers take a hit in revenues when the companies rent the books. The royalty to authors also takes a hit due to textbook rentals. In order to mitigate the threat, the publishers have woken up and are beginning to rent the books to college students. You can read the NYTimes article for details.
