The Amateur Financier

(As you might have come to expect, this Thursday I’ve got another guest post.  This one comes at a particularly opportune time, as students start to acquire their books and other supplies to start college this fall, and some of them have a small heart attack over the prices.  Luckily, Amit Sehgal has some advice on how to keep the price of textbooks under control.)

It’s a reasonably well known fact among college students that college book stores are pricing college textbooks unreasonably high.  These prices only get higher by the year and aren’t showing any signs of relenting.  It’s the same with the tuition costs; these too keep rising.  Then there are all those other miscellaneous costs to add to what students have to pay yearly.  It’s getting harder and harder to learn.  Students can’t do much about these.  However, If students knew EXACTLY what, when and how to do certain things, life will become easier for them.  In this article I’m going to show you a method that will help you make life easier as mentioned above.

The reason for these textbook prices we are experiencing is the work of book stores; they inflate prices in order to fill their pockets. When I first went to college, I was surprised- to say the least. Some books I had to buy carried price tags exceeding $100! With this experience, I devised this method to save a maximum amount on textbook prices.

I have utilized this method numerous times and it always worked for me. So you could say that it’s tried and proven.

1) STEP ONE. Find out from your lecturer whether using old editions of the textbooks would affect your scores adversely. You can typically find your lecturers contact information from the faculty directory of your college’s website. Remember that the changes in content between a new and older version of a college textbook is trivial. Most lecturers know and understand the situation that you, as a student, are in and will allow this.

2) STEP TWO. If the answer to step 1 is positive, go to my two fav online book stores; Amazon and Abe Books.  Now here’s the magic; go there and search for the book you want, but remember to search the previous edition- not the latest one.  Now when the new edition of any given textbook hits the book stores, the old one becomes obsolete.  Everyone turns to it and nobody buys the old one.  Causing its price to drop to near-zero values; you’ll find the book listed for prices close to 97% cheaper!

Alternative plans and extra textbook tips:

If your lecturer insists on you buying the new edition and your scores depend on it, you can follow these steps to ensure that you save the maximum amount possible on that too.

Get back on one of those book stores and search for the international or imported edition of the book and buy it.

You might also have the option of renting textbooks from online book stores like chegg, Campus Book Rentals, etc.  These websites also offer free shipping in both directions and they always have a large number of books in their book stores.  Although college book stores also lend books, their price gives you no benefit over buying new books.  You can say that’s a trick to get you to buy from their book store.

Lastly, remember to sell the books you bought at one of those online book stores and regain some money you spent for it. Even if you don’t get to resell it, the thought of having saved so much money is enough to keep you happy!

About the Author: Amit Sehgal is a writer and website manager.  He enjoys helping students save money on college textbooks.  Check it out to start your comparison shopping for textbooks.