If you’re among the more than 20 million students heading to college this fall, you’ve probably already started stocking up on school supplies. If this is your first time buying college textbooks, get ready for some serious sticker shock.
The price of textbooks has more than doubled in the past decade, with the cost of some individual books now pushing past $400 for new books and $300 for used. “You hear that textbooks are expensive, but as a freshman I was surprised to see how expensive,” says Nihar Suthar, a rising senior at Cornell University.
Don’t worry about blowing your pizza money, yet, though. Even though the price of books is going up, the amount students actually pay for books is going way down, thanks to the rise of eBooks, textbook rentals and peer-to-peer sharing. “Students now have more ways to save money on textbooks than ever before,” says Nicole Allen, director of open education at the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition.
Here are seven tips to keep your costs down:
- Skip the bookstore. Campus bookstores used to have a lock on textbook sales, but now those overpriced shops should be your last stop. Instead, search for the book’s ISBN number Amazon or sites like AbeBooks.com or ValoreBooks, to see if you can get a better price. Amazon recently listed the 9th edition of Exploring Psychology for $113, with a used version available for $76.99.
- Rent your books. Rather than buying your books and selling them back, rent them in the first place. Sites like Chegg.com now offer rentals, and Amazon and Barnes & Nobles have followed suit with some outstanding deals. Amazon was offering Exploring Psychology for rent at $29.95, which could be a better deal if you only need it for part of the semester.
- Visit the library. Most school libraries keep copies of popular textbooks in their stacks. You may be able to borrow the book for free or photocopy relevant chapters to use at home. Using this method, Suthar, an applied economics and management major, was able to avoid buying any textbooks at all last semester.
- Download your books. Load eBooks onto your Kindle or Tablet to save your budget and literally lighten your load. eBooks often sell at a far lower price and some offer multimedia functionality with additional materials. The Kindle version of that psych textbook cost $102,
- Share with a buddy. If you’re taking a class with a friend (or have a pal who is planning to enroll next semester), split the costs of buying the book. Just arrange a studying schedule upfront to ensure that you’re not fighting over who gets a book come cram time for finals.
- Go with an older edition. If you’re in a quickly changing field like computer science or accounting, it’s probably important to have the most recent version of a book. But for some subjects like English or philosophy, going with an older edition will serve your purposes, and save you a ton of cash.
- Get your books early. There are only a limited number of used or rental books available. Once those editions are gone, you may be stuck paying for a pricey new version.
