Alternatives to Overpriced Textbooks

You're not alone, but there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Fortunately, there is an array of websites that specialize in allowing students to buy, sell, swap and even rent textbooks for a fraction of the cost of buying them new at the bookstore.

Some of the most popular choices are well know sites such as Amazon.com, Half.com or CampusBooks.com, where students from all over the world can browse used books by subject, often finding books for sale by other students for much less. At the same time, resourceful students can sell their old books for much more money than they would receive from bookstores.

Another popular choice is eBay.com, where you can bid on used textbooks, or place your own up for auction. The site operates in the same fashion, allowing students to search for a specific book by subject, and then place a bid. Once the auction is won, the seller simply mails the book to the buyer.

One very new alternative is Chegg.com, a service modeled after the popular Netflix, which allows customers to rent movies online and receive them by mail. Using the service, you can choose your books online, pay the rental fee, and have the company mail you the book. At the end of the quarter, you simply mail the book back to the company in a pre-paid envelope in exchange for another book. The service has yet to catch on with many students, but it is another clever alternative to expensive books.

More recently, students are using smaller college websites to buy, sell, or swap books with fellow students from the same campus. Most of these sites have free classified sections where textbooks are listed. The advantage is that you're able to target a more localized audience and eliminate the need for shipping costs and delays. Some gripe at the lack of technical features when compared to larger, more superior sites, but it's yet another option.

Other ways of saving money are shopping overseas through online sites such as Amazon.com.uk, where American textbooks are available at reduced prices. However, shipping can often take up to several weeks, therefore it is best to shop early.

Probably the cheapest alternative available is checking out books from campus libraries. Unbeknownst to many students, school libraries often stock copies of commonly used textbooks on their shelves and instructors usually place at least one copy of a textbook on reserve for everyone to access.

In the flawed textbook industry where students pay publishers for textbooks, but publishers depend on professors as their true customers since they choose what books will be used, innovative students are using these methods to compete in a market where they have no real buying power.

Legislature is in the works, and hopefully a long term solution to the problem will soon be reached among politicians, professors, students and publishers. Until then, use these tips to buy and sell wisely in order to maximize your hard-earned dollars, which for most college students come in very limited quantities.