College Saving Tips: eBooks vs. Textbooks

Often, college-bound kids don’t fully understand that the cost of college includes much more than just tuition. One place they suffer some serious sticker-shock is when they see their first textbook price tags.

But how much could a few books cost?

Hundreds if not thousands of dollars a semester. Seriously. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, textbook prices continue to increase at a rate that is double that of inflation. Kids (if they’re paying) and their parents are getting hit after already being bombarded by so many other escalating costs of college.

Depending on your major, a single book can easily cost a couple of hundred dollars and you’ll probably need several books for each class. Multiple those numbers and it’s easy to see –cha-ching, cha-ching- just how quickly the cost of buying books can make you broke.

However, there are several ways to save money on textbooks. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a sympathetic professor or two who will be willing to provide online content in lieu of those expensive and burdensome traditional texts. Then again, relying on your professors (who might be tied as authors to those old and expensive texts) may not be the most assuredly cost-effective way to go.

While the very best way to save money on books is to use that very old fashioned method of borrowing from the library, that route is unlikely to be practical. You’ll need the book for the whole semester and even if your college library stocks text books as a matter of routine (many do not), they probably won’t have many copies.

The next best way to save some serious dough is to use the many powers of the Internet.

Starting with E-Books.

E-Books are not only cheaper than traditional textbooks, on the whole; some publishers allow you to buy single chapters, rather than whole books. You can save exponentially when you’re buying only a fraction of a book at a fraction of its traditional cost.

One way students have found to save on traditional books is to rent them, instead of buying them. This is great idea. After all, you may not actually find those college textbooks all that riveting after you’ve passed the course.

So if renting a traditional text book is cheaper than buying one, then renting an online book must be even cheaper. You’ve got that right. Not all books or sites allow the practice, but when they do, you’ll save money by taking advantage of the offerings.

The Internet can save you book money in other ways, as well. By virtue of its limitless potential for price shopping, the Internet gives you easy access to the opportunity for big savings. With only a book’s ISBN number and a quick search on comparison-shop sites BestBookBuys.com, SwoopThat.com and Book.ly, you can find most any text book and its best price. And using traditional sites like Amazon, EBay and Barnes & Noble will also give you the power of best-price knowledge to help you save.