Great advice. I would add the following: (1) Use a book search engine to compare prices (like SmartBookFinder.com - http://www.smartbookfinder.com). (2) Upgrade to expedited shipped (3) Ask for the book to be packaged with bubble wrap and/or cardboard (4) Always buy from a reputable sellers

Great Tips! The only thins I would add to Step 1 is to buy your books via book comparison search engine. What is awesome about those websites is they search Amazon.com, Half.com, Alibris.com, Barnes & Noble, etc. for you and tell you where the lowest price. For instance, SmartBookFinder.com - http://www.smartbookfinder.com is great for finding used textbooks. Lastly, I disagree about buying new because I am not sure all the time if it is worth it. Sometimes used books are so much cheaper it is worth just buying them.

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.

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.