Keeping Up With Textbook Prices

The cost of college textbooks can easily add several hundred dollars to your semester’s bill when purchased from the school’s bookstore. In addition, today’s textbooks are more complex affairs with digital CDs and DVDs stuffed in the jackets to give them a multimedia flavor. Along with these additional perks, the cost of the book has to increase. cost of living raises for 2009 might not affect students as much as people with mortgages, cars, and families, but the changes in the economy still make a difference. Students still have to manage to come up with the difference to fund their textbook purchases. What’s a struggling student to do? Here are a few strategies to help you save some money on textbooks.

Check Out Online Retailers

Online retailers like Amazon.com and Abebooks.com allow individual sellers to post any book they want to sell. Often, you can search their library and compare costs to see if you can get a better deal online than you can at the college bookstore. Just be sure to read the fine print and get the same edition and features required by the course before you buy. They have both used and new books that are available for purchase. Factor in the cost of shipping too, as this will affect the final cost.

Should You Have To Buy New

If you find that you can’t get a better deal online, go and buy it at the bookstore and upon immediately finishing the course either sell it back or post it on Amazon.com as a seller. Odds are, if you take this route, you won’t have spent much more than buying it used when you factor in the money you make for reselling your book. Don’t wait too long, however, as college textbooks, in particular, are frequently updated into new editions. Even if your book comes with a CD or DVD, you can resell that or sell only the textbook version. Either way, you will be recouping some of the money you spent last semester to spend on this semesters new listing of required textbooks.