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How to get the best price on textbooks
13 years ago
I’m a book dealer by trade and end up buying a LOT of textbooks for people at this time of year. They can take a huge bite our of your budget, so you want to shop around. Here’s how to get the best deals.
Where to look:
http://www.gettextbooks.com/ (best for textbooks, includes rentals!)
http://used.addall.com/ (best for non-textbook required reading)
http://www.vialibri.net/ (for foreign language and non-US sources)
Google Alerts (see below)
All these return results from multiple sites in a single search.
How to search
START with the ISBN of the book to get all the vital data about edition, exact spelling of the author’s names, data of publication, and whether it has any auxillary materials, and both the ISBN-10 and ISBN-13.
Hey wait, my search for the ISBN turned up no results! —This probably means it’s a custom edition or custom bundle produced JUST for your school. If its a custom edition, you’ll have to buy it from the campus bookstore (if its from Penguin and labelled custom or your own university’s press, this is most likely a custom edition) If its a bundle with a textbook with study guide/cd/software bundle, you may be able to buy the components individually. use the data you have from the booklist to find.
Now you can just copy paste the data, run a second search in another tab with the OTHER ISBN. This may bring up some different results. In a third tab, a search with the book title, the author’s last name, and narrow it with publication date. This will bring up international editions that use the same text, have a different ISBN.
What is an international edition? SAME book as you have in the US… its just a paperback version on lower quality paper stock. It may have some slight differences in pagination. (so chapter 20 starts on page 346 not 345 ) and it has an angry warning on the front saying “Only for sale in Malaysia!” They’re perfectly legal to buy, they just aren’t OK to import for resale. A new international edition shipped from Malaysia or the Philippines (the most frequent sources) is often cheaper than a USED US copy. I order them all the time for people and they sometimes arrive faster than ones shipped from the far cost of the US!
What about renting?
Renting is awesome. Just pay attention to when you have to return it! Renting is a particularly good option if you have to move out at the end of the school year. You have an immediate “home” for a big chunk of stuff.
Caveat: god knows what condition the book will be in when you get it and be wary if you NEED auxilary material.
What if I need supplementary material?
Do you actually NEED that material? many books COME with this material, but you won’t actually need it, check with your professor. Books that are supposed to have the supplementary material and don’t are often available very cheap.
Crap I DO need the supplementary material. do I have to buy new?
Sadly, you often do if its software that comes with a key. Most are only good for one use. HOWEVER… the software manufacturer is often different than the publisher. You may be able to buy the software (and key) direct from the software manufacturer’s website and then buy a used book. Used books with a used key are often really cheap, so doing it this way may be WAY cheaper than buying the bundle.
This is still so expensive! what else can I do?
For many courses you can get away with using one (or even two!) editions back! You are most likely to able to do this with humanities courses. Introductory sciences are also probably okay. The citric acid cycle did not change between editions! The higher the course level, the less likely you are going to be able to do that. You may be completely SOL in some fields like computer science, political science, or law because of the constant and VERY IMPORTANT changes to the field. Ask your professor. Most are sympathetic and will be honest with you about it. This can often be a $100 difference between the current edition and the previous one!
The OTHER thing you can do is play vulture. Prices can fluctuate wildly. Many book dealers use automatic pricing software… which can sometimes go completely awry, like where this textbook on flies spiralled up to $23 MILLION . Those same autopricing programs can drive DOWN prices. Use Google Alerts with the ISBN of the book you need. Have it send a report once a day. Be prepared to pounce on mislisted items!
What about just regular books? I’ve got 10 different non-textbooks I need for a literature class!
Those can nickel and dime you to death. First off, determine if you need THAT edition. You probably don’t. If you’re reading classic literature, most editions are pretty much the same. If you are REQUIRED to read a specific essay included with the book, you may need to get that edition. If it’s a specific translation, again, you may need that edition. It that’s NOT true, buy whatever edition you want! Or check out Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and even Amazon have have free ebooks, largely classics. (you don’t need a fancy e-reader to read them.)
Also check your local used bookstore. Check the one at HOME before you leave for school because the one in your home town will have different stock than the one in college town. If you’ve got 100 students that all need that book… well, the used bookstore in college town runs out fast. But if you’re the only one that needs it at home… supply and demand! You’ll get it for a much better price, often lower than you would online!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Liked this? In convenient rebloggable form over on Tumblr:
http://fenrislorsrai.tumblr.com/pos.....extbooks#notes
Where to look:
http://www.gettextbooks.com/ (best for textbooks, includes rentals!)
http://used.addall.com/ (best for non-textbook required reading)
http://www.vialibri.net/ (for foreign language and non-US sources)
Google Alerts (see below)
All these return results from multiple sites in a single search.
How to search
START with the ISBN of the book to get all the vital data about edition, exact spelling of the author’s names, data of publication, and whether it has any auxillary materials, and both the ISBN-10 and ISBN-13.
Hey wait, my search for the ISBN turned up no results! —This probably means it’s a custom edition or custom bundle produced JUST for your school. If its a custom edition, you’ll have to buy it from the campus bookstore (if its from Penguin and labelled custom or your own university’s press, this is most likely a custom edition) If its a bundle with a textbook with study guide/cd/software bundle, you may be able to buy the components individually. use the data you have from the booklist to find.
Now you can just copy paste the data, run a second search in another tab with the OTHER ISBN. This may bring up some different results. In a third tab, a search with the book title, the author’s last name, and narrow it with publication date. This will bring up international editions that use the same text, have a different ISBN.
What is an international edition? SAME book as you have in the US… its just a paperback version on lower quality paper stock. It may have some slight differences in pagination. (so chapter 20 starts on page 346 not 345 ) and it has an angry warning on the front saying “Only for sale in Malaysia!” They’re perfectly legal to buy, they just aren’t OK to import for resale. A new international edition shipped from Malaysia or the Philippines (the most frequent sources) is often cheaper than a USED US copy. I order them all the time for people and they sometimes arrive faster than ones shipped from the far cost of the US!
What about renting?
Renting is awesome. Just pay attention to when you have to return it! Renting is a particularly good option if you have to move out at the end of the school year. You have an immediate “home” for a big chunk of stuff.
Caveat: god knows what condition the book will be in when you get it and be wary if you NEED auxilary material.
What if I need supplementary material?
Do you actually NEED that material? many books COME with this material, but you won’t actually need it, check with your professor. Books that are supposed to have the supplementary material and don’t are often available very cheap.
Crap I DO need the supplementary material. do I have to buy new?
Sadly, you often do if its software that comes with a key. Most are only good for one use. HOWEVER… the software manufacturer is often different than the publisher. You may be able to buy the software (and key) direct from the software manufacturer’s website and then buy a used book. Used books with a used key are often really cheap, so doing it this way may be WAY cheaper than buying the bundle.
This is still so expensive! what else can I do?
For many courses you can get away with using one (or even two!) editions back! You are most likely to able to do this with humanities courses. Introductory sciences are also probably okay. The citric acid cycle did not change between editions! The higher the course level, the less likely you are going to be able to do that. You may be completely SOL in some fields like computer science, political science, or law because of the constant and VERY IMPORTANT changes to the field. Ask your professor. Most are sympathetic and will be honest with you about it. This can often be a $100 difference between the current edition and the previous one!
The OTHER thing you can do is play vulture. Prices can fluctuate wildly. Many book dealers use automatic pricing software… which can sometimes go completely awry, like where this textbook on flies spiralled up to $23 MILLION . Those same autopricing programs can drive DOWN prices. Use Google Alerts with the ISBN of the book you need. Have it send a report once a day. Be prepared to pounce on mislisted items!
What about just regular books? I’ve got 10 different non-textbooks I need for a literature class!
Those can nickel and dime you to death. First off, determine if you need THAT edition. You probably don’t. If you’re reading classic literature, most editions are pretty much the same. If you are REQUIRED to read a specific essay included with the book, you may need to get that edition. If it’s a specific translation, again, you may need that edition. It that’s NOT true, buy whatever edition you want! Or check out Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and even Amazon have have free ebooks, largely classics. (you don’t need a fancy e-reader to read them.)
Also check your local used bookstore. Check the one at HOME before you leave for school because the one in your home town will have different stock than the one in college town. If you’ve got 100 students that all need that book… well, the used bookstore in college town runs out fast. But if you’re the only one that needs it at home… supply and demand! You’ll get it for a much better price, often lower than you would online!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Liked this? In convenient rebloggable form over on Tumblr:
http://fenrislorsrai.tumblr.com/pos.....extbooks#notes
