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How to Find Cheap Textbooks

Contributor
By eHow Contributing Writer
(5 Ratings)

Textbooks can cost a lot of money, but you don't have to pay a lot. Take some time to look around and you're bound to find some good deals.

Difficulty: Moderate
Instructions

Things You'll Need:

  1. Step 1

    Find out as early as possible which textbooks you'll need for your classes.

  2. Step 2

    Ask older friends who may have taken the class in recent years if they've kept the old textbook or books.

  3. Step 3

    Look for used textbooks at your campus bookstore. They should be clearly marked "Used."

  4. Step 4

    Check out other bookstores with used collections and scour them for the books you need.

  5. Step 5

    Visit used-book Web sites and buy from them.

  6. Step 6

    Be patient, and don't expect to find all your books in one place. That's the nature of bargain hunting.

Tips & Warnings
  • Start looking early. It can take some time to find the best deal.
  • The Web is a great resource for cheap books; the proliferation of online used-book sites has made finding inexpensive textbooks much easier than it used to be.

Comments  

| View All 19 Comments

slickdeals said

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on 1/19/2009 Going to local store is old theme, long gone. For books go for online shopping used/new books at Amazon or Ebay.

And more better use price comparison website as your tool to buy books. That is smart move....

I love this simple website: http://www.textbookhunting.com
But there are more site like this..

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on 12/15/2008 Another tip...check the publishers website...most of them either have the content of the book listed or you can contact them and they can send you the content list. This way you can actually compare side by side a previous edition from a new one. Alot of times they will just change the name of the chapter form..."What's in your future" to "What to expect later in life" and guess what, they are both the exact same thing but with this and slapping a new picture on the cover...bingo...NEW EDITION...MORE MONEY!!

jackknive said

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on 6/8/2008 Do Ebay. I got a $250 text book for $2.25 with free shipping. It was awesome. Also one thing that saves huge is if they want the 5th edition, get the 4th. They are almost always exact, and if not it's so close it won't make a difference. Older versions really do cost a lot less.

bookworm said

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on 11/11/2007 This is article is exactly right. You have to search around before buying your textbooks. The great thing is with the Internet this is easy. There are book price comparison search engines designed exactly for this purpose. The one I use regularly to get discount textbooks is SmartBookFinder.com. They search and compare prices at all the major on-line bookstores. They also have a feature that I use that allows me to find books I can get 'fast' or within 1-7 Days. My last word of advice is buy used if you can.

bookworm said

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on 11/10/2007 The best advice I can give on this is that there are LARGE price differences among on-line bookstores. Thus, using a book price comparison search engine is the way to go. They will find you which bookstore has the lowest price. The one I use is SmartBookFinder.com: http://www.smartbookfinder.com. Its the best book price comparison engine I know of. Last time I used a comparison engine in college I saved tons on my books.

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