Textbooks

Textbook prices continue to skyrocket; 14 percent in the past year alone. Today's average college student is forced to spend more than $1,000 per year on textbooks. Our friends at CampusGrotto used to run a great annual list of the best places to find cheap textbooks. Since they have stopped running this list we figured we would pick up where they left off.

We've run extensive tests of five of the biggest textbook price comparison sites, to see which ones provided the cheapest and most straightforward way of purchasing textbooks. We inputted some of the most common (and expensive) college textbooks out there to evaluate these popular comparison engines: Managerial Accounting (0073379611), Prebles' Artforms (013514132X), Biology with Mastering Biology (0321543254), The Developing Person Through the Life Span (071676072X), and Essentials of Sociology (0205578705).

[ Continue reading Finding the Best Prices on College Textbooks → ]

Tuition costs have been going up. This is a sad reality that faces college students at the beginning of each semester. To add insult to injury, textbook costs are still obscenely high.

Enter TextbookRenter.com.

More and more students have been relying on renting their textbooks to cut down their costs. There are a lot of sites out there, but TextbookRenter puts them all together and compares their prices and terms. It also shows best purchase prices online and the average resale value of the book, which is surprisingly effective.

For instance, "Gardner's Art Through the Ages", the de facto bible for art history, has a best rental and shipping price of $45.34 for a semester, which sounds good next to the average $140 it usually costs. However, the TextbookRenter search engine shows that the book can be had at $76 with a resale value of $40, putting the Total Cost of Ownership to $36, or $9 cheaper than the rental cost.

[ Continue reading Keep Textbook Costs Down This Semester with TextbookRenter → ]

The semester's just starting, which means it's the dreaded time where you spend the money you got over the holidays and most of your kid's college fund (or your beer money) on textbooks. Well, no more! Check out CampusBooks, a service that helps you find cheaper college textbooks.

We spoke with Jeff from CampusBooks last month and we're excited about what they're offering. We just wish we had discovered them sooner! Here's what CampusBooks is all about, in their own words:

CampusBooks.com is a leading comparison shopping website for textbooks. We search over two dozen bookstores in a matter of moments to find you the lowest prices on textbooks. We find the traditional New and Used books, as well as Rental textbooks and eBooks. Let CampusBooks do the leg work while you pocket the savings. And best of all our service is absolutely free.

You can even use the site to sell your textbooks, which is awesome since our bookstore usually only offers about 75 cents when we want to sell our books back at the end of the semester, and then they just end up sitting on our shelf collecting dust. Now you can save some dough and even make some back with CampusBooks. Delicious!

[ Continue reading Looking For Books This Semester? Check Out CampusBooks! → ]