Get Your College Books For Cheap! | Save $100′s With These 2 Resources

College textbooks are yet another expense associated with attending college and there really isn’t any way around that.  However, getting your college books for cheap has become a much easier task than in years past thanks to sites like  CollegeBookRenter.com.

In today’s article, we’re going to explore some money saving tips when it comes to college textbooks.  Specifically, we’ll cover a couple different ways that students have been renting and/or buying their college books for cheap.

How Can You Get College Books For Cheap?

The inception of the internet has caused some major strides in the college research process, applying for admission, and even getting money for college in the form of scholarship sites and student loan comparison sites.  The same is true for acquiring your textbooks for college at a reasonable price!  First, let’s get some information about the differences in textbooks and then we’ll show you a couple resources you can use to get your college books for cheap!

New vs Used Textbooks

Most students prefer to save money and will gladly rent or buy used books.  Almost all stores sell used textbooks for 80% of the new price.  Rental discounts vary greatly but savings usually range from 60 to 85% cheaper than new books.

Electronic vs Printed Textbooks

Acceptance of eBooks is a matter of personal taste.  As a general rule, literature, trade, grammar and style books are acceptable in electronic form.  Larger textbooks like math and science are mostly preferred in their printed form.  However, eBook popularity is growing slightly but is not expected to peak anytime soon. 

Optional vs Required Textbooks

Study guides, answer keys, and solution manuals are usually considered optional books. These books are not required by your professors but they can be useful to the students. Your professor will suggest optional books that can add value to the class.   It’s always best to ask the professor if you will really need them before buying or renting optional books.  Some study guides and solution manuals are not rentable but you should always check availability because the savings are usually very good.

Supplemental material -  CDs and bundles

A bundle is when the publisher or bookstore adds an item or packages a workbook with the textbook.  For example, Microsoft  Excel 2010: Complete (Shelly Cashman Series), ISBN 978-0538750059 would normally cost around $100 new or $80 used at the campus bookstore.  It could be rented from www.CollegeBookRenter.com  for around $25.00.  Since the publisher only makes money on the book when you buy it new, they have to create  ways for you to only buy new books.  They might package a thumb drive with the book, raise the price even higher and then change the ISBN on the “package” so that you can only find that bizarre ISBN at the campus store. 

Get the ISBN of the book and buy your thumb drive separately.   CD’s packaged with your new book may or may not be included when you buy used or rent.  However, by law, the publisher has to make them available to you separately from their websites.  The extra effort will save you a lot.

Custom editions and course packets

These are books and packages compiled by your professor.  He might select only certain chapters of a more popular book and have it condensed to a smaller book.  He may include the syllabus and notes.  These are usually only available at the campus store.  They are seldom sell-able at the end of the semester or quarter.  However, sometimes you can save a lot by buying or renting the original book in its entirety.  If he writes his own book, you don’t have a many options.

College Textbook Sellback, Buyback and Returns

At the end of the school term, sell any books you purchased as soon as you’ve finished finals.  Check online prices first.  A couple of very dependable sites are webuytextbooks.com and CollegeBookRenter.com.  If you rented your books, you don’t have to worry about selling them and the risks of not being able to sell them. 

What are the risks?  Say you waited until the last minute and the bookstores were out of used books and you had to pay $200 for a new biology book. During the semester, the book went out of print and became an “old edition”.  Nobody wants to buy the book because professors are using the newest edition.

As stated before, getting your college books for cheap is much easier than it used to be much thanks to the internet!  Using CollegeBookRenter.com will save you money if you don’t need to keep your textbook for any reason.  And in most cases, you will be happy to get rid of that book!