Where to Buy & Rent Textbooks Online
Textbooks are expensive. Everyone knows this. A recent survey stated that the average student pays between $700 and $1000 per year for textbooks. Paying hundreds of dollars for a single textbook is bad enough, but when a student has to buy several books, it adds a big chunk of money to pay- in addition to tuition, residence fees and other mounting costs. To save some money, students can buy used textbooks from other students and sometimes from the college’s bookstore. However, the modern way of dealing with textbook prices is to head online. The following links will hopefully help you on your quest to save money.
Photo by wohnai.
- ValoreBooks.com. This is the number one place where students can buy textbooks and sell textbooks back! And, in the process, save trees!
- Cheap Textbooks. Try this Super Cheap Textbook Search Engine ™ which will scour the internet for the cheapest price available on any textbook. If you can find a textbook cheaper online - they’ll buy it for you.
- Chegg. Chegg is a multi-purpose website and that’s why I’m listing it first. Students can rent textbooks, buy their books, sell them back to the website and they plant a tree for every book you rent. With Chegg, you can save up to 80% on textbooks.
- Abebooks. Search by title or enter up to ten textbook ISBNs and you’ll see the lowest-priced textbooks for each ISBN. Add the bundle to your basket for quick checkout. You can start searching right here.
- BookRenter.com. Quick delivery, choose between five rental periods and free return shipping. Save up to 75%.
- Textbooks.com. Boasts fast and free delivery on orders of $25+. You can even sell your books back for up to 50%.
- Alibris. Offers new and used textbooks. Save up to 90%. Offers a very large selection and many hard-to-find titles.
- CampusBooks. Offers students the option of searching by subject, in addition to searching by book. You can also sell your books back to the website when you’re finished with them.
- Half.com, eBay and Kijiji. eBay probably has more books to buy but Half.com specializes in books, textbooks, music, movies and video games. Search in your area for textbooks (and other stuff) on Kijiji.
- BookSwim. “Rent books Netflix-style.” Free delivery, free return postage and no due dates or late fees.
- Facebook Marketplace. Log in, go to the Marketplace and type in the title of the book you’re searching for. Shipping rates may be vary, depending on what the seller requests. There are also several textbook applications on Facebook that you might want to check out.
- TextSwap. Buy, sell and trade used textbooks. Gives you the option of searching by university.
- Bartleby. Free, online books. (Seriously, what’s cheaper than a free book?!)
- Cheap College Textbooks. Works like a search engine. Type in what book you’re looking for and it searches several textbook websites for you, comparing prices and showing you the best deal.
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These are just some of the many websites that offer discounted prices on college textbooks. Make sure to shop around for the best deal and read the fine print. Compare shipping prices and return shipping prices, if applicable.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Nice to see you have Chegg listed there. Renting textbooks is one of the better options out there for the cash strapped student.
When it comes to buying textbooks online, you might want to check out this independent study that found the cheapest places to buy textbooks.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:46 am
When I was in college, I my books never cost me more than a $150 bucks in any semester, of course this was the Dark Ages. It is amazing how the cost of going to college has spiral out of control, books included.
There is an education crisis (at least in the US); rising cost will not help the situation. But in any case the sites you suggest will help to defray costs.
The only problem with renting is that course books can sometimes make a great reference for the future…You lose that when you rent and have to return books. But hey, you do what you have to do…
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Renting is definately one of the better alternatives and you do save alot of money. Here is a site that also offers textbooks for rent and it is very easy to use. Its http://www.skoobit.com and I strongly recommend.
September 4th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I can’t believe you missed out on Bigwords.com!!
September 10th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I think you just saved me about five million dollars on textbooks last night. No joke. I love this post.
September 25th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Just found a great site called wecomparebooks.com. It allows you to put in the book you are looking for and compare the prices on a bunch of different sites. Definitely worth checking out.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I found this site through stumbleupon that both buys and sells used textbooks. http://www.textbooklink.com
I saved around $200 there this semester.
It also looks like they would have given me about $75 more for my books last semester than I’d got from the bookstore. If only I’d known about them first!
They even bought a couple books at the beginning of the semester that the bookstore wouldn’t buy back.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:45 am
There are a few websites out there that do student-to-student rental, rentnotbuy.org (the only free one) is a pretty good place to start.
While I’m now a postdoc, I still rent out my undergrad texts to people in my uni.
Peter
August 6th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
You also might want to give a try to a textbook rental and download site called
http://www.dontbuytextbooks.Net
They have all of the sites in one location
January 7th, 2010 at 4:02 am
Chegg is great - I used code CC100290 and got 5% off already low prices. Best decision made, so far!
January 14th, 2010 at 5:08 am
Chegg is a ripoff…I ordered books and they never came. Went to Bookrenter.com, and got them quickly and for LESS money than Chegg. Love Bookrenter.
January 19th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Did you know that the average student will spend over $500 per term buying textbooks? Seems like an awful lot of money to buy textbooks that often get opened one time, right? Well, with Chegg.com, you will save hundreds!
So stop wasting your money and start renting from Chegg.com. I’m on the bandwagon and I’ve saved enough to buy all my term papers! Not really, but I have saved some serious cash by Chegging my books. I have a promo code that will save you an additional 5% off your total order, useCC114222.
Want proof?
Essential Biology by Campbell, Reece & Simon is $83.18 if you buy it on Amazon.com. If you rent it on Chegg.com, it’s only $11.78. That’s a savings of over $71!
It’s so simple, just search for the books you need and place your order. Chegg will ship them to you fast and at the end of the term you ship them back for free. What’s really cool is that they plant a tree for every book that you rent.
Don’t forget to visit Chegg.com and use promo code CC114222.
February 17th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Great post, Renting is changing the textbook industry from a sellers market to a buyers/renters market, prices are dropping rapidly. Check out textbook giant eCampus.com, they have been around longer than any of the other sites. They offer rentals AND eBooks, along with a huge selection of new and used books for the ones you might actually want to keep for later on in your professional career. you can browse through their selection of rentals here: http://www.ecampus.com/rent-textbooks.asp
July 30th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Wow, your blog is excellent. It has darn good content on what I’m interested in. I just bookmarked it. Keep postin’ please! Thanks.
August 6th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
I am a huge fan of http://www.TextbookStop.com
They let you rent or buy your textbooks NEW or USED. I find that if you aren’t going to save more than $20 by renting, you should just buy the book. I don’t like that TEXTBOOK RENTAL only webistes don’t give you the option…