How To Get College Textbooks Without The Cost

Don’t Pay Top Dollars For Textbooks, Or Any Dollars!

There are dozens of virtual libraries that offer reference material and literature with no cost at all to you. While newer books are likely to be online, hundreds of older pieces are all over the Internet. There are thousands of ebooks and reference materials free of charge.

Goggle Scholar offers a very popular database of free academic articles and ebooks. If your curriculum consists of an over-priced packet of photocopied articles, check to see if the material is available through the computer before handing over the cash.

Another alternative is trying to find a student in your area who purchased the book or books during a previous semester. If your school has message boards or other means of communicating with your peers, you may seek out students who have taken the course before. Most likely they would be willing to sell the book at a discounted price.

If you are near a physical college campus that offers courses similar to your online classes, scouring the campus for flyers advertising student-sold books may be your ticket to saving a few dollars.

Before you begin a random search, find out what buildings house the departments that are likely to require your books. Students often post advertisements on the walls of their old classrooms. If you are not able to get your books for free, at least make sure you get a good price for them.

Some students are able to find their required materials in the library. While your regular public library is unlikely to carry most traditional textbooks, a local college may have the books available for limited use. If the librarians won’t let you take the books with you, you may be able too use them for a couple of hours each day in order to get your studying done anyway.

Be Sure To Shop Around

You should be able to find almost any text for less than its suggested retail price. Before you search anywhere else check out the following site, it’s great: CompareTextbook.com. This site allows users to type in the title of any college textbook and instantly displays a list of online bookstores and their prices.

Another site, Alibris, connects to hundreds of independent booksellers around the world, finding you some of the best prices on used and new textbooks. And want to save on shipping? Run an Alibris search to see if there is a local bookstore that will allow you to pick up the book you are looking for.

Textbooks can cost a small fortune. It seems that every year the required texts get heavier and the prices get higher. According to one study, the average student will pay almost $1,000 for books during a single year. An undergraduate student may end up paying up to $4,000 on books before he or she receives a degree.

If you want to save money, don’t wait until the last minute to buy your books. When ordering from an online source, it may take time for you to find the best deal, and for your order to be processed and shipped.

If you are disciplined enough to look ahead a month or two, you may be able to save a lot by bidding during an off-time, when hordes of students are not looking for the same book. Finding your books for cheap or for free will take time and energy. But, to hundreds of students, getting a good deal is worth the extra effort.