Help finding cheap college text books

August 17, 2012 12:55 PM

What are some sources for inexpensive college text books (used, rentals, etc.)?

My brother is starting college this month and needs to get his text books, however, money is very tight (and so we're looking to cut costs where applicable). I know of Amazon, Powell's, and ebay for looking up used books, but also came across some sites (eg, ecampus.com) that rent text books.
(1) Can you recommend any other (reputable) sites for purchasing used text books outright?
(2) How sketchy are the rental sites in general (due to the cost of text books entering the zeitgeist, I'm a bit cautious about possible scams, swindlers, etc.)? Are there any caveats I/he should look out for? And, finally, any recommendations?

Thanks!

posted by MikeKD to shopping (27 answers total)

I work for a university.

For course that are routinely offered and routinely use the same book and for which no new edition will be release in the next few years, students can rent a textbook instead of buy one. Direct from the bookstore for about half the cost of buying it. It has been a very popular program here. His school may have something similar.

He can also try half.com, which is now a part of e-bay. I knew people who used this in college and were very pleased with it.
posted by zizzle at 12:59 PM on August 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

How about half.com. They RENT text books.

Also, I saved a shit-ton of money checking out the textbooks from the college library or sitting in the bookstore and doing my work in the aisle. (Yes, I have big, brass balls.)

Why would one want to purchase a textbook when one could rent one? Textbooks are obsolete pretty much once the wrapping is off of them.

I've purchased tons o'stuff from half.com and I love dealing with them.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:00 PM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Absolute first place to check is the University Library. You can check the book out for the first month, then renew for the second. Have your roommate request for the last part of the semester and you're done. During my undergrad, this is how I got more than half my books. If your academic library doesn't have them, see if your municipal library can get them through inter library loan, but that will be for a shorter period of time, I believe. Also, ask the professors if a past edition will work, as those are usually super inexpensive, often times the prof will have an extra copy if you're really hard up.
posted by Nickel Pickle at 1:01 PM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

What are some sources for inexpensive college text books (used, rentals, etc.)?

First of all, Amazon. They offer used books. Shipping is a flat $3.99, and books can go for as little as pennies. Textbooks are likely to be more expensive than that, but you can really get some books for cheap that way.

Second, try other students. Many universities have formal or informal systems whereby students sell textbooks back and forth. On the formal side, there may actually be a website for this. Informally, check the student union, etc., for flyers posted by other students offering books for sale.

Third, note that most college bookstores will buy books back if they're in reasonably good condition. They also tend to sell used texts. So if you spend, say, $100 on a used book, you might be able to re-sell it to the store for $50 or something at the end of the semester. Or you could probably sell it for $80 to another student. That means you do need to lay out the $100 at some point, but it's kind of a temporary "investment".

But the problem is that professors frequently change their syllabi or use new versions, making the used market pretty dicey at times. A book that was bought new might be useless at the end of the semester if a new version has come or is coming out.

Any way you slice it, this is just going to be expensive. Academic publishers have a stranglehold on that particular market and every incentive to milk it for all it's worth. Things are changing, but slowly.
posted by valkyryn at 1:02 PM on August 17, 2012

(1) Half.com via ebay is pretty good and very reputable
(2) Most courses will have books on reserve in the library, this is a good place to avoid buying books for some courses depending on how the lecturer uses them. Hard to predict at first, but it gets easier with practice. (One of my pet peeves I should really not get started on)
(3) Once your brother has a group of friends in his major in university who he commonly shares classes with and trusts, you can totally do group buy ins too for some courses on top of other strategies if it is convenient.

The best bet that I have seen however are used book swap type things that some campuses put on. Otherwise trying to buy used books from people who are selling them back for a bit more than the university or local book store buys them for. This works best for large universities and classes, obviously, and especially while in the dorms is relatively easy to do - you can post fliers in common areas advertising what ya want. I have seen people make posts on craigslist, facebook, etc as well to buy them off students/friends.
posted by McSwaggers at 1:08 PM on August 17, 2012

I've also had good luck with abebooks.com for used copies
posted by brilliantine at 1:13 PM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's also BookRenter.com -- but I don't know anything about them.
posted by phliar at 1:14 PM on August 17, 2012

Incoming senior and chronically broke-ass student here. Here's what I've learned.

Never, ever buy new textbooks unless there is absolutely no other option. Never buy textbooks through the university bookstore unless they are available absolutely nowhere else.

Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. Students can get a free year of Amazon Prime (aka Amazon Student) which gives free two-day shipping on many books and other items. It's great.

Check with professors to see if it's OK to use the previous edition instead of the most current; oftentimes it's totally fine, and obsolete editions are always cheaper. If there's an international edition it will also be cheaper and probably the only difference will be that the illustrations will be in black & white.

If the textbook has an e-book component that is required for the class (the bane of my existence) then see if the e-book component includes an electronic version of the whole text. If possible, buy that by itself and skip the paper textbook.

Many textbooks are available online as pirate PDFs. These are of course free, but are also illegal (not that there are going to be any repercussions for downloading them) and also may not square OK with your personal ethics. I could give some more specific advice here but I think that is frowned upon in these parts.

Textbooks can be rented from half.com, chegg, and a few other places. This is cheaper than buying new and sometimes cheaper than buying a used copy of a new edition. The big players are not sketchy.

Many universities will do a textbook buy-back shortly after the end of the semester, in which it may be possible to recoup some costs.

If the textbook comes with a required online component other than a full e-text, it may be cheaper to buy the login separately from the manufacturer's website and then buy the book separately. If there is an online component that is *not* required for the class, don't buy it. I have never, ever, ever found it to be useful.

Consider just not buying the textbook and using the library a lot to fill in the gaps. This works better for some classes than others, and he will have to use his judgement here. I usually don't buy my textbooks until after the first week of classes so that I can triage which ones I will be able to get away with not buying at all.

Good luck. Textbooks are a racket. I hate hate hate hate this part of college education. If you want more specific advice, memail me. Screwing the usurious textbook companies out of their price-gouging profit margins is something that I consider part of my solemn duty as a broke student.
posted by Scientist at 1:19 PM on August 17, 2012 [5 favorites]

I dislike renting and eBooks as they are often almost as expensive as the books themselves ($100 for a semester rental? Bullshit!).

Many professors put textbooks on "course reserve". This means it's on reserve in the library and you can check them out for a few hours. Another library trick is to utilize Interlibrary Loan Services in both the university and local library to see if you can borrow the textbook or an older edition from another library. Do this early (like now) to increase your chances of getting the textbook!

For many textbooks (math and science, excepting recent discoveries) you can utilize old editions, even as far back as two or three editions ago. The information doesn't change. Just make sure you go to lectures. If you are assigned problems straight from the book, utilize the aforementioned course reserve or meet other students in the class. Ask your professor if old editions are OK, and keep in mind sometimes you'll do fine even if the professor is snitty about it.

For novels and whatnot for literature classes there is absolutely no reason to buy the Fancy University Library Jacked Up Price edition. The text of "To Kill a Mockingbird" has not changed whether you get your copy for a penny on Amazon or the $20 copy at the university bookstore.

Try to hook yourself up with upperclassmen in your chosen major. They will often have copies of the textbooks and can let you borrow them.

MAKE SURE YOU ACTUALLY USE THE TEXTBOOK. This goes for ALL educational services, like WebAssign or other online educational websites. I've taken a significant number where $300 worth of textbooks and WebAssign crap was listed as "required" and the teacher didn't use them at all. My summer course syllabus claimed we would be assigned problems from WebAssign and needed the $100 subscription--and the teacher didn't touch it. Ever. Not even for practice problems. It's now my rule of thumb to give a class a week or two to see if I need the textbook before buying them.

Spend a good few hours pricing out old and new editions online before grabbing one. AddALL is great for this.

The number of classes where you need a textbook NOWNOWNOW are precious few. For times when you've exhausted all other options and need it immediately though, join Amazon Prime as a student (it's free the first year) and you get free two-day shipping and one-day shipping is only $4.

There are also places on the Internet where you can find these textbooks for free that may or may not be legal in your country.

Anyway doing all of the above has helped me spend probably less than $400-$500 on textbooks and course materials in the past two years I've been in school.
posted by schroedinger at 1:20 PM on August 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Bigwords.com!! So good. You put in all the books you need and it searches through half.com and abebooks and twenty or so other sellers and then gives you the cheapest store for each book individually as well as the store that is cheapest to buy all of your books from as a group.

I always thought rentals were kind of a rip off. You can buy textbooks used and then sell them at the end of the semester for almost as much as you bought them for if you're willing to put in the work of putting them up on half.com. The exception being if it's a textbook where they have a brand new edition every year-- if it's a major change then the old edition will be practically worthless.
posted by geegollygosh at 1:21 PM on August 17, 2012 [3 favorites]

On preview - schroedinger and Scientist give great advice. When you do your textbook shopping, bear in mind that it is highly unlikely that your brother will actually use all of the assigned books. I would never buy books until I saw the teacher's actual syllabus, and I would hesitate to buy books if I cold find comparable resources for free.

Otherwise:

Depending on the college and the teacher, there may be a copy or two of the textbook on reserve in the school library. It does really depend on the class, but if your brother can learn to take notes while he reads, he may not need the actual book in his hands for more than an hour or two a week. Some things (math and physics problem sets, for example) can either be copied or photocopied straight out of the book.

It's also worth looking into old editions of textbooks, especially for subjects that haven't changed much. It's a fairly open secret that textbook publishers often only make small changes from edition to edition, because putting out a fresh edition tanks the used-book market and boosts profits. (I wold be cautious, though - publishers often change pagination and alter problem sets to prevent people from doing this.)

If it's a non-academic book, look to your local libraries. If it's in the public domain, look for free ebooks. It's nice to have the same edition that the professor has, but probably not $15-$20 worth of nice.

Many publishers have digital versions of their textbooks that are slightly cheaper and marginally less backbreaking. In a pinch, they might be better than buying from the school bookstore. There is also a lot of textbook piracy out there. (Not suggesting, just noting.)
posted by catalytics at 1:26 PM on August 17, 2012

I used yo use Varsity Books online. A little searching indicates they are now http://www.bkstr.com/
posted by Michele in California at 1:28 PM on August 17, 2012

When I was in school I found grey-market international textbooks to be the best bet if you actually needed the book. Most useful for mathematics and science texts. Try Abebooks or Alibris or one of those giant textbook search engines.

Depending on the book, sometimes you can read enough excerpts on Google Books to get a gist of the concepts/arguments. (I never tried this, but I knew a PhD candidate who did so maybe it's also dependent on domain-specific knowledge.)

A cheap e-reader that's been rooted may be useful for reading PDFs if he doesn't have a laptop.
posted by calistasm at 1:32 PM on August 17, 2012

1) Book rental at places like www.chegg.com which includes e-texts as well;
2) Amazon.com has amazingly good, used prices with a flat delivery fee but independent dealers like Powell's or Alibris are also worth considering;
3) ebay or half.com;
4) fellow students -- post your needs to a student listserv or post on campus buying or selling;
5) other used books sources or aggregators like AbeBooks are quite good but be careful on shipping from international sources;
6) International book sellers are also another option -- look to India or Singapore;
7) Get a copy of the syllabus and if the instructor only uses a chapter then get the book, make a xerox of the chapter and return it to the bookstore for the full price in the first few days;
8) Professors can be quite flexible about editions for a course;
9) Professors may have spare copies for free;
10) There are dedicated torrent sites for textbooks *cough* but you will need a good e-reader or converter software. The dominant file type is PDF.
posted by jadepearl at 1:37 PM on August 17, 2012

Seconding/n-thing the suggestion of AbeBooks. Results are sorted by price including shipping, so the price of international shipping isn't really a concern. The one downside to ordering books from overseas (particularly Asia generally, but especially China) is that they seem to take longer to arrive than you might expect.

AbeBooks also does book buyback in what appears to be a reasonably efficient and straightforward manner (I haven't actually sold them the one book I have that's still a current edition). There's a good chance selling to them (or Amazon) will get him a better price than selling to the bookstore.

My university library now has some e-books available. These seem to turn out to be just the chapters available in PDF format, which is brilliant. How common this is for your bog standard undergrad textbook, I don't know, and I doubt there are many available this way because there's so much money to be made from textbooks.

Also, there may be bookstores stocking textbooks other than the university bookstore. If there's a used bookstore near campus, they probably have a good selection of books (again, this isn't a great bet for the basic books). Where I was an undergrad, there were two books, the university one and one across the street. The general consensus was that they colluded, both on price and on how many copies they stocked (or who stocked used copies, etc.), but the cost effective thing was to note their prices, then look on the internet, then go back and buy things from both stores than you couldn't find online.

For many textbooks (math and science, excepting recent discoveries) you can utilize old editions, even as far back as two or three editions ago.

As far as I've been able to tell, it's typically the problems that change, and I'd consider that fatal to the plan of using older editions--you're going to be spending so much time in the library checking you've got the correct problems, that you might as well just photocopy the exercises from the library's copy and not buy the book in the first place.
posted by hoyland at 2:10 PM on August 17, 2012

Nthing BIGWORDS. It's saved me a ton of money.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:40 PM on August 17, 2012

So much excellent advice here. Adding a few comments (as a professor):

Be wary of what the professor says about textbook requirements, as he or she may be limited by university policies on what they are allowed to say or not say about textbooks. In my world, all courses are required to have a textbook, even if the professor doesn't wish to use one. (Score one for the influence of the textbook publishers.)

Our bookstore gives VERY little of the book's value back to the student during book buyback, so smart students sell their books to other students or online.

Consider sharing the cost of a textbook with another student in the same course/section, assuming you know of someone trustworthy, or are willing to risk it. I've seen this work best with siblings, but it's worth asking around.

Ask the instructor if they have an extra copy, or depending on the course, even an extra book on the same subject from a different publisher, if you're ok with doing some legwork to match up your book with the course's schedule. We get sent so many damn books to review, it's a shame that they mostly just sit on our shelves. However, don't fault the instructor if they can't or won't lend you a copy of the book - technically, this is against the rules. (Score two for the influence of textbook publishers!)

The suggestion about older versions or international versions is right on. I have seen international copies that were really flimsy though, so be aware of that. (Like, the book just randomly split in half right down the spine when the student opened it.) If you go this route, chapters and problem/exercise sets will probably be numbered differently, so make sure you know if this is the case before you submit homework.

Also, if you want to buy the book in person, never use official college bookstores. Look for an unaffiliated store (sometimes they're right across the street, ahem).
posted by SuperSquirrel at 2:50 PM on August 17, 2012

Depending on his course, his need to own the text may vary, as will his costs. Many libraries will have most but not all textbooks on reserve; I think this is actually less likely at larger schools, but he should be able to check out the library's website ahead of time to see their policy or email them for an answer. Another suggestion might be to keep an eye out on the bulletin boards of his school and any surrounding schools, as many, many students will be selling their books and there's a lot of overlap especially for science courses. If he is studying anything humanities-based, he may want to try going to used book stores and library sales. I ended up with all 30-odd plays and books needed for a history of theater class for something like 15 bucks. If either your home or his school is located in a bigger city, he will likely have more options like this.

Please, please, do not have him try to ILL his books, at least not without talking to an interlibrary loan person first. I work in ILL at a small school and sometimes will get besieged by ten requests a day for popular textbooks, which we absolutely cannot lend as they are in use by our own students. Most loans are for several weeks, not a semester. (Not my list, but it's a pretty good one.) This is less of an issue for books like theory texts or reading compilations in humanities subjects though, and I'm sure the staff at his school would happy to help him with his options! Your state may have consortium-based options like Pennsylvania's PALCI/EZBorrow that could provide him with more flexible options.

One ILL librarian suggested these options, suggested by their reference staff as well:

http://www.addall.com (a
book price comparison site), http://www.bookrenter.com
and http://www.chegg.com
(book renter sites), and http://www.coursesmart.com
(an e-book rental site).
posted by jetlagaddict at 3:40 PM on August 17, 2012

Wow! Thanks for all the suggestions.

(FYI, he's going to the local community college (then planning to transfer to a CSU). Also the area outside of the city limits is fairly rural, so the non-affiliated bookstore options is B&N.)
posted by MikeKD at 3:45 PM on August 17, 2012

If you have friends in Asia, ask them to bring/ship your textbooks. All major publishers have Eastern Economy Editions for textbooks and they are all usually paperback and black and white print. If you are interested in the subject matter and your course matter isn't really color dependent, this would be the best way to save.
posted by savitarka at 3:45 PM on August 17, 2012

Abebooks.com has delicious selection, beautiful prices, and a lot of the sellers give proceeds to charity, like better world books. They (better world books) also have great book prices and a website btw.
posted by windykites at 4:54 PM on August 17, 2012

Academic librarian here. I'd like to warn you away from the "check the books out from the library for the semester" route because 1) the librarians are on to you and you probably won't be able to renew them, thus putting your access privileges (and fines) at risk 2) the books are for everyone in your class - why should you get exclusive use? and 3) if classes start in 3 weeks, some enterprising soul probably already has them.

At my library, we avoid this by placing two copies of every required text on Reserve for use in the library. Check to see if your library does this or something similar. If they don't, ask them about it and find out what it would take for them to start (answer: $$$). You can then follow up with student government (good campaign issue, actually helps students) and the administration (wonderful retention issue) and get them on board.

But! This does not help your brother right now. The discount options listed above are good ones. One other option to consider is working with fellow students to make copies of a book. Mad copyright mojo, sure, but given the scummy way publishers treat textbooks and students (new edition every 2 years! custom editions you can't sell back!), I've turned many a blind eye to gatherings around ye olde copy machine.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:21 PM on August 17, 2012

Some textbooks have very few changes in the "new" edition. He might be able to use a previous edition with a few notes on changes to problem sets and such.
posted by yohko at 7:00 PM on August 17, 2012

Seconding checking university libraries, as well as libraries in the area.

Also, if you do have to buy textbooks, you can re-sell them on Amazon at the end of the semester and make back most of your money. I did this in college, and actually sold some books for $10 more than I paid in some instances. That extra income saved me more than a few times.
posted by picapica at 8:41 PM on August 17, 2012

I very rarely bought books my whole time in university, especially if they were textbooks. I used library copies on reserve, studied with groups, and took copious notes in every class. I only bought books that were collections of essays or otherwise not information that I couldn't dig up online, or that had homework questions in them. My university bookstore pricematched and also had links to online sources of books.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:48 AM on August 18, 2012

Amazon, Amazon, Amazon

Bookfinder.com is better at finding cheap books, I've found (I work in a used bookstore and use it daily). It's owned by Amazon and includes Amazon's used book listings, but also includes many more listings from used book dealers who don't list at Amazon. When I'm looking for a used book for myself, I never just search Amazon. At least 75% of the time I'll find a cheaper copy at Bookfinder.
posted by mediareport at 9:08 PM on August 21, 2012

So, I used BIGWORDS and ended up getting them from BookRenter.com and College Book Renter. (It was a rush job since he started classes on 8/20.) I also told him about the course reserve, but he's working part time and said he probably wouldn't be able to get the work done in the library. Hopefully he'll be better prepared next semester and possibly talk to his profs before to see if course reserve will work.
posted by MikeKD at 7:23 PM on September 15, 2012