How to Buy Cheap College Textbooks - wikiHow

How to Buy Cheap College Textbooks - wikiHow

Lots of other hints and tips at the link, here's a bit from the site:

College is a big business, and one of the biggest expenses in this business -- next to tuition, room, and board, is college textbooks. Nothing hits your party pocketbook like a trip to the campus bookstore. Reselling books may recoup some of your investment, but not all. Don’t take out the extra loans. Just follow this lesson to lessen the cost of your education.

• Consider electronic versions of textbooks from sites like iChapters or Safari. Online books can't be resold but they often sell for as little as fifty percent of a new book's price. Classic literature no longer under copyright, can be downloaded for free at sites like Bartleby.
• If a search engine search isn’t very fruitful, try searching directly at online booksellers’ sites.
• Try to search in search engines that specializes in book searches, like addall.com, bookfinder.com or similar. They compare prices from different online vendors.
• Find out if any books are optional, and think twice about buying them. Some optional books are really quite necessary, while others aren’t. Ask your professor or TA for advice if in doubt, and consider your own study habits. If you tend to ignore the optional materials anyway, then there's no point in wasting your money on it.
• If your Internet search for the ISBN brings up a lot of unrelated items, try entering the ISBN along with the letters “ISBN” in the search bar.
• Always include shipping costs in your calculations. You may be able to save money on shipping by purchasing several books from one merchant.
• Don't forget about international editions. They're generally exactly the same as their American counterparts, except they often come only in paperback, and the pages may feel a bit different.
• Different professors teaching the same course often use different books. Find out which professor requires the least expensive books and sign up for his or her course.
• Using more than a few online book resellers might not be beneficial. Don't waste time and confuse yourself with multiple sites; focus on finding what you need, especially if the prices all appear to be about the same.