Those of you preparing to pack off to college – you must have very mixed feelings! Leaving home – great, being on your own – hooray!, making all your decisions yourself – nothing to beat it!, working part-time/full-time – been there, doing the washing – thumbs down, finding funds for college books – oh, my. That’s where you get that sinking feeling.
You’ll be told you can resell them to the campus bookstore. It’s a no-deal. A $100 book gets $12 end of semester. And why is it that you pay the MRP while every other book comes at a discount? Shouldn’t student books, whose cost could total up to more than $1000, be heavily discounted? Some would call it exploitation.Three new federal rules might just crack open a silver lining. [1] Publishers now cannot force colleges to buy books and workbooks as one bundle. [2] All prices of textbooks must be made clear to college authorities when salesmen make their pitch. [3] Colleges must give students a list of textbooks required for their courses. Students must be given the list during registration, and this gives them enough time for shopping and to find bargains online. They could find books for rent as well.

Where do you go for book bargains? Try these.
[1] Eiden’s mom says “Try Google Books”. It has a database of texts, but there’s no guarantee you will get all the pages, or all the books you’ll need.
[2] I have found Project Gutenberg useful. It has a library of a large collection of out-of-copyright books. Access is free.
[3] There are also the Open-Source text books. If the professor assigns projects on these, you could download a copy for free from FlatWorld Knowledge. Printed and bound books are available too at cheap rates.
[4] eTextbooks is another option. Problem is, you need to read them online, but at probably half the cost of a textbook. No, you can’t bend the corner to bookmark it.
[5] Have you tried Manybooks.net. This is where you download into kindle or iPhone.

Other options are renting, buying online and selling.
CONTINUED…