How to Save Money on College Textbooks: Rent!
Students, say goodbye to expensive textbooks.
That bookstore that won’t buy back your textbooks after the class has ended? Gone. Good riddance.
These days, the options for cutting the costs of college textbooks are many… and word’s spreading fast.
Renting Textbooks Is Now the Way To Go…
Say a new textbook costs $80, and used edition goes for $60.
The new rental option lets students rent it for $40 (or roughly half-off). Granted, you can’t sell the book back when you’re done, but students these days are increasingly frustrated by not selling books back, anyhow.
In many textbook rental programs, students have the option of transferring their rental to a full purchase, typically within the first two weeks of class. And some rental programs allow students to use highlighters and write margin notes in the books (all within reason).
A few things to keep in mind…
Availability of rental textbooks is running at just 30% – 40% at most colleges that offer rental programs, and some students choosing to rent have discovered they’re not getting the textbooks during the timeframe they need them.
Other Ways To Save Money on the Cost of College Textbooks:
- Early-bird textbook discounts: Many students are going online to their bookstore websites to take advantage of early-bird discounts… which typically cover both new and used books.
- Check out sites like chegg.com. This can save students many hundreds of dollars. Other places to research: Project Gutenberg and Google Books, which has a strong database of free scanned textbooks.
- Borrow and share your textbooks with other students. Social media web sites like Facebook and Twitter make it easy to connect with other students in this regard.
- Check to see if you can purchase the international edition of the textbook.
Regards,
Scott Weingold
Publisher, College Made Simple
P.S. Here are more articles on how to save on the high cost of college.
