As if tuition wasn’t already enough, college textbooks can be a huge financial hardship for students. With books averaging about $115 apiece, it is not unusual for students to have textbook fees of $400 or more per semester. That is the hardship on the front-end. On the back-end, insult is added to injury when students, trying to resell their used textbooks to the campus bookstore, only get a fraction of what they paid for them (usually 30% of their original price) even if the book is in pristine condition. Smart students know that for substantial textbook savings, one has to bypass the bookstore and shop online. With a little comparison searching, students can find the books that they need for class at up to a 95% savings - that’s right, I said 95%.

As a full-time student, I have purchased my books this way for years and it really does work, you just need a strategy. Here are some of the tricks I use to get the books that I need at the prices I can actually afford to pay:

1. Find Out if You Can Use an Older Edition: On the first day of class, when most instructors review the syllabus and course requirements, ask if it is allowable to use a previous edition of the textbook. Having tried this for many classes, the answer is surprisingly yes far more often than it is no. Furthermore, the difference in price between the current edition of a book and even just one edition ago can be $100. From there, you just look for the older edition online. Don’t be surprised if you find the book for $1 while your poor classmates have to put out $135.

2. Shop Early: Once you have gotten a class syllabus and the names of the books you will need, go online immediately to purchase them. Even if that means you use a computer on campus or at a nearby coffee shop or even your web-enabled cell phone. However you do it, do not let too much time pass before getting on the computer and doing your searching. The reason is obvious: other clever students are doing the same thing and as used books come at different prices, the early birds will get the lower-priced books leaving the higher-priced ones for all of those who put off looking until tomorrow.

3. Search by the ISBN Number: One of the risks that come along with buying your textbook online is that you could potentially buy the wrong book. The best way to avoid that is to do your searches by the book’s ISBN number which is located on the back in the barcode area or on the inside cover with the publisher’s information. The reason for this is that many times the cover shots of books may be generic or submitted by sellers so they may or may not ‘appear’ like the book you are ‘looking’ for, but the ISBN speaks to what is inside the book, how the pages are numbered, etc. In other words, who cares if the cover of the book matches, as long as the content is the same, you have the right book.

4. Comparison Shop: There are many, many different bookstore shingles hanging out online, most of which are oriented towards the needs of students. In other words, most of them accurately represent the textbooks, have reliable sellers and offer student-critical services such as expedited shipping. While there are others, here is a list of booksellers that I have had great success with in finding my used books

• Amazon
• AbeBooks
• BookByte
• Books a Million
• Ebay
• Half.com
• PhatCampus

5. When You Find It, Buy It!: This is very important. If you find your $175 anatomy book for $25 with the right ISBN and coming from a reputable seller, just buy it! Some people can take comparison shopping to the extreme and in so doing, lose out on a sweet deal that was right in the palms of their hands. Again, there are many other students looking around for the same book and not just other students from your class, but from similar classes all around the world so, the competition is stiffer that it would appear on the surface.

More than anyone, students especially need to be concerned with managing their finances and proactively thinking about the amounts they will have to repay in student loan debt down the line. With this in mind, the ability to buy really cheap college textbooks over the course of two, five, ten, even fifteen years, makes a lot of sense if this ultimately lowers the loan amounts that students borrow each semester.

Happy hunting and if you have any tips to add to this list, please leave comments because for all of the students who know this strategy, there are five out there who do not.

P.S. If you are wondering ‘where can I sell my textbooks?’, almost all of these online sellers buy back textbooks too!

Tags | amazon, buy back textbooks, college textbooks, Debt, finance, really cheap college textbooks, sell my textbooks, shopping, smart students, textbook fees, used textbooks