Don’t Pay Inflated Prices! Shop Around For Books

There are few things less gratifying than returning a barely-used $70 textbook to the campus bookstore and being offered $12 and a Blow Pop as compensation. Students walk away from the bookstore buy-back looking dazed. No doubt, these glassy-eyed students wonder how the latest edition “Math Can Be Your Friend, Too!” could depreciate faster than a Kia Rio.

While there aren’t many options for getting back most of the original investment on textbooks, there are ways to save money when buying books.

There’s an old axiom that says the early bird gets the worm. This is especially true in the case of book purchasing. The USA bookstore, located between the Student Center and Meisler Hall has the textbooks for the upcoming semester available approximately a month in advance of the start of the semester. These listings are also online at www.southalabama.edu/bookstore.

Wise students visit the bookstore or the Web site as soon as booklists appear and write down the name, edition, year, publisher, author, ISBN and cost of the books they will need. Before making any purchases, these prudent students go home and see if a better bargain can’t be found online before emptying their wallets on the bookstore’s behalf.

Online, students have the option of renting or purchasing their textbooks. Enter the book’s ISBN number into a Google search. Using searches engines such as Gettextbooks.com or BookPrice.com, students can expedite the process of finding the cheapest deal.

The Norton Book of Composition Studies by Susan Miller was used as a guinea pig to see where the best deal could be found. At the USA Bookstore, Miller’s book is valued $52 new and $39 used. It can be purchased new at Amazon.com for $46.57, but the book is cheaper to rent from Chegg.com, where it can be leased for a semester at $27.20. The book was not available at Anders Bookstore located on Old Shell Road.

Other book renting sites like Chegg.com and Campusbookrentals.com are options as well, but Chegg was $69.56, and the book wasn’t available on the other site. Still, other books may be better bargains on these sites.

Sites with buy-only options include AbeBooks.com and Half.com. Many sites, like Amazon.com, rate the quality of used books as well. When buying online, it is important to check feedback left by other buyers to keep from getting ripped off.

Another thing to keep in mind when buying books online is that not all online retailers include supplementary discs that come with certain textbooks. The discs are often sold separately. Many classes that have books with supplementary discs never require use of them, but neither the USA bookstore nor Anders will buy back books without the discs. Still, it may be cheaper to buy the book knowing it won’t be sold back.

In the case of a calculus book in 2005, the book was $112 at the USA bookstore but was purchased new at AbeBooks for $12. Although the book couldn’t be returned for its lack of the original disk, the paltry return the book would have yielded made scrapping $12 for a new book worthwhile.

When buying books, students should also consider that many textbooks don’t vary significantly from edition to edition. Additional money can be saved by buying or renting a textbook that is an edition older than the one suggested by the professor, although students should mind that an older edition textbook may not have exact diagrams or correct page numbers when completing assignments and will need to find ways to compensate when studying.

There are many ways students can stay ahead of the game. Sometimes, students who buy online may find themselves getting lucky by selling their book back for more than was originally paid for the book. Such surprises are welcome, but because such treats are not guaranteed, it’s wiser for the frugal student to save money up front instead of hoping for a miracle when they are selling back a month’s rent worth of books.