Save some dough: cheaper textbooks
Recently our glorious Editorial Board presented their opinion on the on-campus options for purchasing textbooks. While their stance was strong, my job isn't to choose sides. (Besides, who do you think pays my bills?) This same article pointed to a possible solution: the Internet. I'm not going to pretend that Amazon and eBay are hidden secrets known only to the socially deprived such as myself, but I do happen to possess a couple hints for the masses.
Prior to my first day of college, I ventured online to find cheaper copies of my required texts. Luckily, I happened to have the foresight to engage in said venturing many weeks before classes began. Since those days, I have added to my repertoire of online price-checking. Currently my bi-annual process proceeds thus: Establish the list of required books from PrairieWolves.com (much to my chagrin, you'll need to take advantage of a non-Mozilla browser), compare this list to a generic price check and, finally, actually pay for the orders. In a given semester, I have saved anywhere from fifty to sixty percent from the retail, bookstore price.
Before we get into my specific recommendations, keep a few guidelines close to your heart. First, don't be afraid of buying from lesser-known websites—the days of constant uneasiness from e-commerce are gone; in fact, a smattering of studies has shown that transactions online are [generally] just as secure as traditional transactions. Second, establish a set of base rules for your search. While the bookstore's website will provide you with author, publishing date, publisher and often the edition, the same pleasantries are not always available from competing sources. Finally, take advantage of multiple sources—don't restrict your quest to one site, as often another site just happens to have the one deal you're struggling to pin down.
Waited long enough? Alright, here are my recommendations. For price checking and comparison (search by author, title or ISBN), I use a combination of gettextbooks.com, directtextbook.com and bigwords.com (preference to the first). This search, notably on gettextbooks.com, will provide a list of competing prices, including shipping, and sort them by price. For a more direct route, the routinely cheapest vendors are Half.com (fixed-price sister site of eBay), Amazon, a1Books and TextBookX.
Occasionally, finding a specific book becomes quite the challenge. In these situations, the most frequent culprit is the publishing date or edition. While first-hand experience teaches me that literature classes have the most leeway, other classes (pretty much every other department) require a specific edition. In these cases, a pricing search such as listed above becomes quite necessary for finding a cheaper alternative to the local bookstore.
As we begin approaching the middle of the semester—which eventually becomes the end of the semester—we all must realize that there will come a time to get rid of our textual collection. Once again the choice comes down to the bookstore versus the ‘net. The former might be generous enough to give you cash in dougle-digits, but the latter is more apt to provide returns of close to seventy-five percent. Selling your books is an inexact science, as it often relies entirely on the age and condition of the book you purchased—if you chose to save a few bucks on a beat-up, highlighted copy, you might end up selling it back for a drastically lower price. However, the flip side has quite the upside, as a recently released book could sell for near your original purchase price.
In a deliciously cliché conclusion, we've now covered the essentials to replacing the apparently unacceptable local source with an online alternative. Compare your prices, find the best deal, and don't be afraid of doing business with a lesser-known vendor (although do be suspicious if they openly state their intentions to rip you off). Perhaps this time next year we'll be sitting around the proverbial campfire exchanging our success stores? Or, as is more likely, perhaps we'll just be sitting around.