College Textbooks: Buying Online to Save Money

I’ve walked up and down the aisles of my university bookstore many times, and every time it amazes me just how expensive college text books are. While attending my college orientation a little while back, the college bookstore representative stepped up to the podium to try to explain not only their prices, but why you should buy from them instead of somewhere else. I sat intently and listened to the speaker talk about how much a text book costs to bring into production and about how I should support the university by buying from them. Then they discussed how their prices are consistent with other stores and how they offer the best buyback price as well. Were these actual tips for students or just clever tactics that any smart business uses? I say the latter.

Step into any college book store and look at the price for a few books. Some are reasonably priced, but the sad thing is that these books are very few and immensely far between. The answer to these high prices: the internet. On various sites all over the world wide web consumer-students turned bargain hunters can find all or nearly all of the textbooks they need for much less than what the bookstore charges, and that includes shipping. Very few students, or parents for that matter, utilize this resource which can save you hundreds of dollars in just a single semester

One such site is www.half.com, which is owned and operated by eBay. This site offers many products for “half-price”, and while this is not true one-hundred percent of the time, it is typically the case when it comes to textbooks. Each textbook you look up on half.com has a rating based on what condition it is in. Varying conditions for the same book result in different prices. This site, in particular, is very user friendly, allowing users to search for text books in several different ways.