Are you paying too much for textbooks?

The price of textbooks, like the hidden charges on your credit card, can put a hole in your wallet, making it harder to afford simple pleasures. If you’re just picking up your textbooks at the campus bookstore, you’re doing it wrong. Here are some tips on how to save big on textbooks. Price hunting You can go just about anywhere and find those text books for Lit 101 or Biology cheaper than you’ll find them on campus, but there are a few great sites that have figured out how to search for the best price on books. Bigwords has set out to “protect the universe from high textbook” prices. Simply enter the name of each textbook and add it to your bookbag by clicking “buy or rent.” We’ll get to the “rent” part. Then you can start the price comparison. CampusBooks works much the same way, and in many ways is a preferable site, as it searches thousands of well-known sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Chegg (another great site). In many cases, used books are your best bet. Often, it cost just as much to rent a book as it does to buy one. Even if it’s a few dollars more expensive, at the end of the semester, you can sell you textbook back. Plenty of sites (and maybe even your campus bookstore) offer to buy back texts, including Amazon, Chegg, Barnes & Noble, BookByte, Alibris and many more. Rent Chegg is great for renting and sites like Bigwords and CampusBooks give you more options. Other standouts are CampusBookRentals, BookRenter and Textbooks.com. Going digital Going digital isn’t always cheaper (or easier) but there are a lot of benefits. Whether you’re using an iPad, Kindle, Nook, computer or other device, an internet connection and the ability to highlight passages and search through textbooks with keywords offers a lot to busy students. Beyond Apple, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, CourseSmart will let you read online or via a copy-protected PDF and they have a mobile app. CourseSmart brags that “users have access to over 90% of core higher education titles used today as eTextbooks, and the largest catalog of eResources and digital course materials available.” Kindle and Nook owners /app users can also rent text books. Scholarship What? Yeah. There are lots of scholarship opportunities out there. One is Textbooks for a Year Scholarship. It’s an essay contest, more or less, and it gives students the opportunity to win enough to buy their textbooks for a whole year. There are tons of options out there to save on textbooks. This just scratches the surface. But, make sure you buy your books early. Don’t wait to order on the first day of class. Get a hold of your syllabus or visit the campus bookstore to see what you’ll need for the semester and order before you’re given your first homework assignment.