Saving Money In College: Buy Textbooks the smart way

Post by: COYD Staff

This month College Of Your Dreams is focusing on helping our students pay for the college that they were just accepted into. The last postings discussed good scholarship websites and how to appeal your financial package. We will be including more information about financial aid in the future but for the rest of the week, we will be discussing how a student can minimize their costs while they are in college.

TEXTBOOKS!

Every student has to have textbooks for college. Most students wait til the day before class begins to buy their books. That is the #1 way to pay the most for your textbooks. Preparation is key to saving money and making college more affordable.

Step 1: Prepare
– Find out as early as possible which textbooks are used in your class. You can e-mail your professor or call the administrator of the professor’s department and find out which textbooks they will be using for their class.

Step 2: Buy or Rent

– Buy from a friend or barter with a friend: This method takes a little bit more time but it could save you a lot of money. Many universities have bulletin boards or “craiglist-type” forums that allow students to sell books to each other. Check to see if your university has something similar.

– Buy used books: There are many websites that sell discount books and used books. See below for some of those websites:

Ecampus.com is a good site which not only sells discounted and used books but also buys them. Use code 10off150 to get $10 off your purchase from ecampus.com

Bookbyte.com is another good website that buys and sells used and discounted books.

– Rent used books: You don’t always have to buy books, you can also rent them. See below for a few good websites that provide book rental services:

Bookrenter.com is good place to rent your books online.

Campus Book Rentals is a another good websites where you can rent textbooks and save money.

Step 3: Sell
– A lot of the times, you can sell your books back to the college bookstore or you can sell to used bookstores. There are websites as well that make this process fast and easy. Both Ecampus.comand Bookbyte.com are sites where you can sell your books.