by Dennis Huckabee

Created on: July 05, 2009   Last Updated: August 21, 2009

Buying textbooks can be quite the daunting task for college students of any level, from freshman to last year graduate student. They always put a drain on your money when starting the semester, without promise of actually getting use out of the book! Many college book stores no longer offer a rental program. In addition, most college bookstores only carry a limited number of used books, and offer a paltry amount on book buybacks.

You can save a lot of money buying textbooks online for the semester, as long as you know where to go, and provided that you know well enough in advance what books you need. I have provided a list of websites and descriptions below where you can find cheaper than college bookstore copies.

Book price comparison

If you are intent on actually buying your book, the first place I would recommend to try is a book price comparison site. These sites search through dozens, if not more, online bookstores and return to you a list of the lowest prices available. This is much quicker and faster than going to each site individually. The downside is that sometimes the data provided to these sites is not up to date, and you may have to do a little manual tracking. Overall the best option for starting a search though. Below I have listed a suggestion based on past experience. There are many others however, just do a google search. Bookspy seems to be up to date, and provide a nice simple way to find the books you need.

BookSpy.Net Your Text Book Price Comparsion Engine Search by ISBN, title, author, or other keywords. Nice, easy to use book search site. Can rate and recommend books, see previous customer reviews, details about the book, and more.

Major bookstores

The other option in buying your books is to visit all of the major online booksellers themselves. Most online book retailers have a marketplace section where third party sellers can sell used and new copies of the book you are looking for, often significantly cheaper than retail value, probably saving upwards of 80% in some cases. Keep in mind however that most book price comparison sites search through the marketplace sellers a s well! The major online booksellers are:

Amazon.com The most well known place to buy used and new books. Often very cheap, but not always the cheapest, especially on textbooks. A good starting place though.

Half.com Half.com Is quickly gaining ground on Amazon as far as number of books offered. Similar pricing to Amazon, may be able

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