Save Money on Textbooks: Buy Used

This semester is drawing to a close, and that means that we will soon see another semester — and another round of buying textbooks. How well I remember those days! The good news is that we now have a number of options beyond buying new (and likely being gouged) from the bookstore. Here are some great places you can find used textbooks and save money next semester:

1. Student boards and online book swaps: Many university student centers offer helpful boards where you can find students looking to sell books, or to swap them. Some campuses even have online book exchange web sites where you can locate those looking to sell or swap their text books.
2. Buy used online: We regularly get my husband’s textbooks used from Amazon. All you need is the ISBN. Enter it into Google, or at some other book site, and see if you can find used books for sale. Often, you can get these books for cheaper than the used price at the university bookstore.
3. Alternative bookstores: Some college towns have alternative university bookstores. You can go to these physical locations to find good deals on used textbooks.

It is also worth noting that you can usually sell your old textbooks in these exact places. You will never get back what you paid for a textbook — new or used — but you can recoup some of it.

Image source: greenasian via Flickr