How I beat the College Textbook Racket

I decided to go back to school.

This is a good thing.

I got back in, no problems. Financial aid? No sweat, after a small blip, I get a pell grant. Enrollment? 5 classes, all online (to save me 100 mi round trip a day to school), my advisor is amazing.

Now.. onto books.

Ah, books. The time honored tradition of schools making hand over fist while bending students backwards and upside down, not only emptying their pockets, wallets, and their financial aid, but profiting major bucks off of the lazy student.

I decided to not be lazy this year and shop intelligently by finding the best prices, figuring that when I get my excess of Financial Aid, I will just pay off (or, back, in this case, as I used money in savings for all the eBay things – Amazon got my credit card, which will make Capital One very happy :P).

This is what I did. Hopefully it will help someone out there.

First, I went through and asked friends where they’d go to buy books. The list basically went (in ABC order):

Alibris
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Borders
college bookstore
eBay
half.com
any used bookstores in the area

Called a few of the bookstores, when they don’t carry textbooks, that makes it easy. I compared prices between Alibris, B&N, and Borders because there are easy to find coupons. 99% of the time, Amazon beat them.

So the final four as it were are:

Amazon (Free Student Prime was a big factor)
College bookstore
eBay
half.com

I was also informed by a friend that chegg.com rents out textbooks! Which.. would be great, if they had had the books I needed to rent in stock. 🙂 But they do look to be an awesome alternative that bears mentioning here. (plus, available for use through mrrebates.com and coupons on top of it).

My classes are:
American Literature II, British Literature II, Introduction to Cultural Societies: Fairy Tales, General Psychology, and Macroeconomics.

Books required:

AMII: Norton American Lit Vol. C, D, E, 7th Ed by Baym et al. ISBN: 0393929949

BLII: Norton English Literature Vol 2, 8th Ed, by Greenblatt et al. ISBN: 0393927156

Fairy Tales: the Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. ISBN: 074329890X
The Classic Fairy Tales by Tatar. ISBN: 0393972771

Macroecon: The Macro Economy Today, 12th edition, by Schiller. ISBN: 007724740X

Psych: Exploring Psychology, 8th Edition, by Myers. ISBN: 1429238267

~

I had a notebook where I listed the above information, then wrote down all the new (n) and used (u) prices for everywhere I could. With the below list, it should be fairly evident how I figured out pricing.
From then, it was a matter of “Do I keep looking around on eBay, or do I just buy?”

I’ll list my final prices as well, and where I bought them.

I realize this requires a bit of time – for me, saving the money is worth it. I’ll add it up as we go along, and base the savings had I bought them in the bookstore.

AMII: Norton American Lit Vol. C, D, E, 7th Ed by Baym et al. ISBN: 0393929949

n 68 u 51 – BS
n 43 u 50 – Zon
u 54+ – half

bought: new, amazon, with Classic Fairy Tales (total price 62.93 for both with shipping)

BLII: Norton English Literature Vol 2, 8th Ed, by Greenblatt et al. ISBN: 0393927156

n 62.50 u 46.99 – BS
n 51.68 u 44.00 – zon
u 55.00 – half
u 50.00+ – ebay

bought Amazon, New – 55.45 with tax (+ 2 $5 incentives) (none of the used copies were any good – highlighting/marks, and slowest shipping speed possible.)

Fairy Tales:
the Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. ISBN: 074329890X
n 14 u 11 – BS
n 10.88 u 2.60 – zon
u 2+ – half/ebay

bought used – eBay $5.57 including shipping (-3% from Mrrebates)

The Classic Fairy Tales by Tatar. ISBN: 0393972771

n 23 u 17 – BS
n 15 – zon
u 13-14 – half/ebay

bought: new, amazon, with AMLII (total price 62.93 for both with shipping + 2 $5 incentives)

Macroecon: The Macro Economy Today, 12th edition, by Schiller. ISBN: 007724740X

n 147 u 110 – BS
n 106 u 95 – zon
96+ u – half
70+ – ebay

after camping for a while, bought used on eBay for $69 including shipping (-3% from Mrrebates). This by far and away was my lucky grab for the semester.

Psych: Exploring Psychology, 8th Edition, by Myers. ISBN: 1429238267

n 101 u 76 – BS
n 82.60 u 66 – zon
69+ u – half.com
60-80 – eBay

bought used on eBay for 66.53 including shipping (-3% from Mrrebates)

Before any incentives or discounts, I paid $259.48 – and half of these were new! (The Nortons I will most likely keep, as I’m a literature major anyway.)

Now.. had I gone blindly to the bookstore, I would have bought all used and paid $311.99 – and when I went to check the other day, the Brit Lit II books that were used were all written up and had water damage, and the macro econ books were in terrible shape as well.

So basically because I’m slightly patient, I saved about $53 (before any percentage back from Mrrebates, eBay bucks, what have you) and ended up with new books, which technically will resell for much better (since i’ll be the only user of them) – if I decide to sell them.

So. This is just one way to beat the bookstore way – and proves that even though the bookstore claims to be the best, it’s not always so.

If you have any questions, please post! I’d be happy to help/answer them!