With undergraduate students paying an average of over $1,000 on textbooks per year, it’s no wonder why every student is looking for cheap textbooks. On top of tuition, housing, meal plans, and transportation, textbooks are yet another expense to stress over.
Luckily, they don’t have to be a source of stress! There are a few ways students can cut the cost of textbooks to a couple of hundred dollars or even less for a year’s worth of classes.
-
Secondhand Bookstores
While not the most reliable way of finding textbooks, second hand bookstores are a cheap and environmentally friendly way to save money on textbooks. Depending on where you live, you may have access to a wide range of bookstores. If there’s a college campus or multiple colleges nearby, you have far better chances of finding the right textbook for your class.
So, if you can sift through everything and find textbooks for your class, local second hand bookstores can be a great way to save money! The main downsides are inconsistency (you never know what will be available) and the time and energy you’ll need to put into scouring the bookshelves.
-
Contact Students Who Have Taken the Class
More often than not, someone has taken the exact same class with the exact same professor as you’re about to. That means that someone has had to rent or buy the textbook you’ll need for that class. But how do you go about finding those students who have the textbook you’re looking for?
There are a few ways most students connect for textbooks: through friends, classroom group chats, or social media. Platforms like Facebook usually have forums where students can post textbooks they’re trying to sell. Or you can find them the old-fashioned way—by talking to people on campus and asking around.
But this method still doesn’t guarantee that you’ll find the textbooks you’re looking for. Maybe the class wasn’t offered last semester, so students who took it last already got rid of their textbooks. Whatever the reason, the most reliable source of cheap textbooks is next on the list.
-
Buy Online
Did you know that rather than running around town from bookstore to bookstore or searching social media, you can find the best deal on a used textbook your need for the coming semester in a single search? There’s an option to compare prices for books across dozens of online vendors in real-time with platforms called price comparison engines.
For example, with BookScouter.com finding cheap used textbooks can be as easy as a single online query as this price comparison site will do all the groundwork for you searching all major online bookstores and marketplaces for their real-time pricing. You can check out any ISBN on the site, and find the textbook you need at the best possible price.
Conclusion
Finding cheap textbooks shouldn’t have to be a source of stress. Instead, you should be excited about getting ready for the upcoming year in college. Rather than searching online forums for textbook sales, you should be decorating your room, meeting new people, and looking forward to the school year.