If you are currently in college (or university) or you are going to be attending college soon, then you know that you will need textbooks. It is not like high school where your teacher lends you the textbooks to use for an entire year. In college, you will pay a lot of money to get your textbooks, or a little less money if you are following our advice.
Some classes may require you one textbook, while others may require you two to four textbooks and/or books. Some may range as little as $1.99, while others could run you at $199.99, if not higher depending on your class and your level of studies. As you can see, the cost of textbooks can vary significantly.
The most expensive textbook that we know of is Renewable Energy at $9,075. There are however plenty of textbooks that sell at $0.01. The textbooks for your class will vary in price range from what we have seen as used books are typically priced at 35% less than the price of a new book.
Once you are registered for a class, you can consult your registrar’s office of your college (or university) for the textbooks that you are required to get. This list should be available before your class begins, thanks to the Higher Education Opportunity Act (Public Law 110-315) aka HEOA which requires institutions to disclose the ISBN numbers for the required and recommended textbooks for your college classes.
Once you have the list of textbooks that you will need for your classes, the best place to find them is online. Save yourself the trips from one local bookstore to another as you set out to compare prices and to buy textbooks for cheap. You can do this online and have it delivered to your dorm or to your house just in time for class or even a week before your class begins. We tested out several places to buy textbooks and we were most pleased with Prepbooks. Their service was excellent and this is very important when you are buying online and you need excellent support.
If you have a friend who is taking the same class as you, then it may make sense for you to share the same textbook and save yourselves some money. However, keep in mind that it could become a problem on exam week as both of you will need that same textbook to study. So unless you are able to share here as well, then buy your own textbook.
Once you have completed your class (hopefully you have passed your class), you may not need the same textbook any longer. In this case, consider selling it on the same online marketplace from where you have purchased it, direct to a buyer and save yourself from getting a lower value for your book from your local bookstore. Many textbooks have newer editions, some come as frequent as once a year, if not more. If the class that you have just completed has a newer edition textbook for the next semester class, then you should not wait too long before you offload. You should sell your textbook as your chances are still good that a similar class at another university is using the same edition textbook, at least for the time being. The price of the textbook will eventually plummet so that the price to ship the textbook will be much higher than the price of the textbook itself.
