How to Find Cheap Text Books

by Morgan Hamilton

Do you fit the stereotype of the poor college student? Maybe you are eating ramen and sucking down coffee to stay fed and awake for those late-night study sessions. It’s easy to come out of a four year university with over a hundred grand in debts because college is expensive. In fact, some private college tuitions can reach over $35,000. Of course, tuition doesn’t cover everything because college students still need to pay for things like housing, clothes, food, and books.

If students take part in any extracurricular activities, then their schedules can make it hard for them to work a part-time job while in school. Summer jobs can be low priorities to students looking for solid internships to help out their graduate school or future employment opportunities. Unfortunately, many of these students can be even more strapped for cash because many of the best internships are unpaid.

The first walk into the bookstore is one of the most unexpected expenses for first-year college students. You probably realize that you’re going to buy books if you’re a first-year student. However, there’s a good chance you didn’t realize that the books for one semester can easily cost $1,000. This means that a first year student may need to find cheap text books to save money.

Some freshmen argue that it’s not so bad because they can just sell their books back at the end of the semester and get their money back. However, this is nothing but a pipe dream for most students, even if this strategy may work for some students. This is because it’s rare for a book to fetch more than half of its cover price when it’s resold to a bookstore. The local college bookstore may not even take the books back because the professors often change textbooks or won’t teach the same course from one semester to the next.

You can look for cheap text books to save money if you’re a college student. The problem is that these books can sometimes be tough to track down. Used books may be the easiest way to find cheap text books because they can often be found right alongside the new books in the campus bookstore.

Buying cheap text books directly from students at the end of a semester is also a good way of saving money. It’s easy to find cheap text books from the students who are already in the class and looking to sell off their books if you know what classes you’ll be taking and what textbooks they’ll require. You can find cheap text books and they can sell their books at a better profit if you can cut out the middleman.