Paying for college tuition, housing, and fees is expensive enough, but the beginning of each semester brings a gut punch when the list of required college textbooks are published. To help you navigate your school experience being smart about your cents, here are the top 5 ways to find college textbook cheap by the School Cents editors.
#1 Buy Used College Textbooks
The first tip is to plan early and buy used books. Your university bookstore should have a selection of used books they have bought back from previous students, hopefully offered at a significant discount over new versions.
However, your college bookstore is not the only place to find used college textbooks. Local used bookstores might just have the book you are looking for. Beyond local bookstores, Amazon’s brigade of third party used bookstores have an enormous selection of used college textbooks for cheap.
Again, planning ahead is key. You will find prices for college textbooks will always be higher on line at the start of a term. If you know what classes you will be taking ahead of time, contact the professor for a book list and buy your books for the next semester’s classes mid-way through the term before. This also allows time for books to arrive by media mail.
Remember: Plan ahead and save!
#2 Rent College Textbooks
Another option to avoid paying out full price for college textbooks is to rent the book. Your university bookstore may have books available to rent. Amazon also has college textbook rental programs.
#3 Buy Older Editions of College Textbooks
Part of your college education is not just book knowledge, but life experience. One of the lessons you will learn is that many people will take advantage of others if they can, and those others includes you, dear college student.
As explained in this article by Henry Farrell in the Washington Post, college textbooks are a racket. Here he highlights unethical college professors and administrators who assign expensive textbooks because they personally profit, but it goes further than that.
You may be asking “why are there so many editions of college textbooks?”
Here is a brief Economics 101 lesson in the pricing of college textbooks.
Let’s say a publisher has a book for a class on American History and they have professors in 100 universities teaching from their textbook. Each of those universities averages 200 students using the textbook in a year. That is 20,000 textbooks sold, assuming each student buys a textbook.
The publisher gets the full wholesale price of the textbook, the university makes the difference between the wholesale and retail price, and the student pays the full retail price.
But how many people want to keep a college textbook on American History? Most likely, not many. If the textbook is still being used the next semester, the college student can sell it back to their university bookstore and maybe get 40% of their money back.
Let’s say 90 percent of students sell back that American history book.
In the next go-around, the university has used books for 90% of their students, maybe they sell it for 60% of retail, making a 20% profit off the resale of that used college textbook. The college student is saving 40% off of retail, and will save even more when they sell back their college textbook to the university bookstore.
What about the publisher? Rather than selling 20,000 textbooks as they did in the first run, they only sell 2,000.
But they have a way to shut down that second hand market and force students to buy their books new. They just publish a new edition, most of the time with very minimal changes. They may move a sidebar from one chapter to another, add or remove something from the appendix, or sometimes it is something as minor as changing the color of chapter headings.
Regardless of how minor the changes, existing college textbooks in circulation are not now “current.” Universities will be the current version and won’t buy back the old, forcing all of those new students to pay full retail price again.
Which is why our advice to you is to be savvy shoppers. If your university is assigning a textbook by a publisher that is churning out a new edition every year to keep the retail price up, take a little bit of time to do some research. Find an old edition in the library and check it out, compare it to the new one in the university bookstore. If they are basically the same, don’t pay through the nose to line the pockets of that unethical textbook publisher.
Go to Amazon, very likely previous editions will be available for rock bottom prices from third party booksellers.
#4 Check out College Textbooks from Library
Another option to get in your required reading in your college textbook, not only for cheap but for free, is to check the book out from the library. Usually college libraries have textbooks available for use, although you probably won’t be able to check them out and there will most likely be limitations on the length of time you can use them. Also, check your local city or county library to see if they have in on hand.
#5 Share College Textbooks with a Friend
Our fifth tip to get college textbooks for cheap is to share with a friend. As you meet the students in your cohort, get to know those who are in the same major or track. If you have reliable study partners, think about sharing a college textbook library. Maybe one person will buy a book for one class, while you buy one for another.
Make sure this book co-op are with people that are reliable, that won’t lose the books, and that you will be able to connect with when you need to study.
We hope you found our five tips useful. If you saved money with one of this tips, be sure to share this article and let us know on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram!
