Textbooks on the cheap

Geezer here again….

1. Buy and sell your textbooks online - at EasySchoolbooks.com

When the Cheap College Dude started going to our local community college I was amazed and dazed at how much his textbooks cost and how little the bookstore would buy them back for at the end of the quarter. I think he only got about 10-15% of what he paid for them, and he got to stand in huge lines for the privilege.

So I went looking for online textbook sites and found tons of them. It didn’t take long to realize that the best deals were at the auction sites: Amazon.com and Half.com. Supply and demand really does work. Both sites make it easy to buy and sell textbooks, and their fees are reasonable.

But I wanted a site that listed offerings from both sites so as to make it easy to compare and get the best deal.  I wasn’t happy with any of the sites I found. Either they didn’t give you enough information, provided no seller feedback ratings, didn’t list enough books, or were so clogged with ads it was dizzying. And a few even had outdated or inaccurate listings. So being the programmer I am I decided to create my own site. I was determined to make it the best on the web. It’s called EasySchoolbooks.com. I believe it’s your best choice for buying and selling textbooks because:

• We integrate Half.com and Amazon’s listings into a single concise page providing you with all the info you need to quickly evaluate your options and choose the best deal.
• The listings are fresh, in fact they’re gathered real time.
• No need to worry about third party shopping carts - after selecting your textbooks you checkout directly with Amazon and/or Buy.com.
• When it comes time to sell your textbooks, our Sellers area makes it easy for you to maximize your profits by showing you what merchant you should list with and at what price.

Often you can buy, use, and then resell your textbooks in such a way that you’ll be out less than the price of shipping.

Just visit EasySchoolbook and see for yourself. If it’s not the best textbook site on the web, or you have suggestions on how we can make it better, please let me know.

2. Some college libraries stock a copy or two of each textbook used during the year and will loan them to you for nothing. You’d need to jump on this early.

3. Cheap College Dude had a couple of classes that used special edition textbooks supposedly tailored just for his college. Check with your prof to see if the special edition is required. Often there’s no real difference and it’s just a gimmick by the book publishers to get you away from the online auction sites.

4. Textbook publishers seem to release new versions every three years or so thereby obsoleting older versions. Again, check with your prof and see what versions he/she will accept. Oftentimes the new versions only have incredibly minor changes, and profs, realizing this, will accept older versions. Those older versions can be dirt cheap online compared to the latest version - the old supply and demand thing again.

5. Conversely, keep in mind that if you’ve got an edition that’s probably going to be updated soon then you’ll have a harder time selling it online when you’re done with it and you might not get as much as you would otherwise.

6. Although I haven’t researched it, it seems to me that you would want to buy early and when it comes time to sell your textbooks list them early but high and then lower your price as it gets closer to the new semester.. Buying early will give you more time to look for good deals and there will probably be more stock available. Buying late will cause you to be bidding against all those other procrastinators thereby driving up the price on limited stock.

7. Give yourself 10 days lead time from when you order the book online and when you must have it. It usually takes the seller a day or two to ship it and then 5-7 days shipping before you get it. In reality, we’ve gotten most of our books withing a few days, but better to be safe than sorry.

8. Check your local bookstore buyback prices. Some are MUCH more fair than others. It could be that it makes sense to buy from and sell back to your local bookstore just for the convenience.

9. When ordering online, buy from sellers with positive feedbacks.  There are scammers everywhere, even in the used textbook market.

10. Read the seller comments on the condition of the book they’re selling as they can contain important information.

11. Publishers don’t like the online marketplace so they’ve started adding one-use extras such as CDs that require registering and online access codes that make it harder to resell textbooks once they’ve been used.  Congress is working on a bill that, amongst other things, would put some sort of limits on this practice.  Hold your breath.

Ask your prof if you need these extras.  If you don’t need them then you can save some real money. On the flip-side if the prof requires those extras then check the seller comments to make sure they’re include.  Keep in mind that books with the extras will command more than those without, so if you don’t have them, don’t expect to get as much when you go to sell your copy.

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Thanks!