Buying textbooks can be quite the daunting task for college students of any level, from freshman to last year graduate student. They always put a drain on your money when starting the semester, without promise of actually getting use out of the book! Many college book stores no longer offer a rental program. In addition, most college bookstores only carry a limited number of used books, and offer a paltry amount on book buybacks.
You can save a lot of money if you buy used textbooks online for the semester, as long as you know where to go, and provided that you know well enough in advance what books you need. I have provided a list of websites and descriptions below where you can find cheaper than college bookstore copies.
Book price comparison
If you are intent on actually buying your book, the first place I would recommend to try is a book price comparison site. These sites search through dozens, if not more, online bookstores and return to you a list of the lowest prices available. This is much quicker and faster than going to each site individually. The downside is that sometimes the data provided to these sites is not up to date, and you may have to do a little manual tracking. Overall the best option for starting a search though. Below I have listed a suggestion based on past experience. Of course we are biased to our very own BookSpy.net, but there are many others however, just do a google search. We try to stay ahead of the game however, and will respond promptly and quickly to any suggestions you may have to improve the search service.
BookSpy.Net Your Text Book Price Comparsion Engine Search by ISBN, title, author, or other keywords. Nice, easy to use book search site. Can rate and recommend books, see previous customer reviews, details about the book, and more.
Major bookstores
The other option in buying your books is to visit all of the major online booksellers themselves. Most online book retailers have a marketplace section where third party sellers can sell used and new copies of the book you are looking for, often significantly cheaper than retail value, probably saving upwards of 80% in some cases. Keep in mind however that most book price comparison sites search through the marketplace sellers a s well! The major online booksellers are:
Amazon.com The most well known place to buy used and new books. Often very cheap, but not always the cheapest, especially on textbooks. A good starting place though.
Half.com Half.com Is quickly gaining ground on Amazon as far as number of books offered. Similar pricing to Amazon, may be able to find cheaper textbooks.
Alibris.com Another fairly large site with a high number of marketplace sellers. A lot of sellers here opt in to what is known as automatic re-pricing of their inventory. What this means is that every so often, prices will be adjusted to match the new low prices in the marketplace. Can often find good deals here.
Barnesandnobles.com I have found Barnes and Nobles marketplace sellers to be a little more pricey than others, although I have found pretty good deals via a book price comparison site a few times.
Biblio.com I do not have any purchasing experience with Biblio, but have heard good things. I have seen them pop up as the low price on book price comparison sites a few times.
Ebay.com Ebay can be tricky. Sometimes you get great deals, other times people overpay for a book. There are two formats that you can buy books via Ebay. The first is fixed price auctions, which works somewhat like Half.com. The seller lists a price for the book and a seller determined shipping charge. Often fixed priced auctions are pricey. The other option is buying on auction. The listing is active for 3, 5 or 7 days, and people are allowed to bid. Not really recommended for college students however, unless you know well in advance what book you need, since you have to wait for the auction to end, and there is no guarantee you will not be outbid at the last minute.
Book rental sites
Yet another option is renting your books online. I do not have much experience in this area so cannot make an accurate recommendation. Some sites that do offer rental programs are:
Chegg.com
Bookrenter.com
Campusbookrentals.com
Book trades
If you are feeling a little more risky, you may be able to get your book for the cost of shipping, or even free, from book trading sites. How this works is you post books that you would like to trade in exchange for a book you want. This is probably not ideal for most students, as the book you seek may not even be available. You would have to know well in advance what books you need to start looking for them. Some examples of these sites are:
Paperbackswap.com
Swaptree.com
Libraries
Finally, the ultimate FREE source for books, your library! You can search for a book at all the libraries near you at WorldCat.org. If there are no local copies of your book, most schools offer an interlibrary loan program and can most likely get you the book within a week. In addition, most schools also keep a few copies of the required books for classes, but they may get checked out early. If you can get a copy however, simply make photocopies of the relevant parts of the book, and you are on your way! This is even cheaper if you have access to a departmental copier at no cost.
Important Tips and Notes
Remember, when buying books from third party sellers, give ample time for shipping and any problems that may arise. Books are mostly shipped via media mail which can take up to two weeks to arrive, so plan accordingly. If you are on top of buying your books at a price that you are more comfortable with, you WILL be rewarded with more cash this semester. Buying books online is always cheaper than buying at your bookstore. Best of luck finding your books!
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We have a pretty major update for users of our book price comparison site BookSpy.Net. Search results and price comparison pages now include Amazon.com ratings of the book, as well as reviews of the book. Simply click on ‘Amazon.com Reviews’ to see the reviews for the book. We have also added more detailed book information including shipping weight, binding, and summaries of the book under the ‘Details’ link. See the graphic below for a visual guide:
Book reviews, book ratings, and more now at BookSpy!
We hope this benefits our users, and as always, if you have any suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact us!
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We’ve recently added a new feature here at BookSpy.Net. A gadget version of our popular book price search site is now available through Google Gadgets.
Using the BookSpy.Net Gadget
The BookSpy.Net Google gadget lets you quickly search for textbooks from your desktop, iGoogle page, or even your own web page or blog. To use the gadget, simply enter a title, author, or ISBN, and click ‘Search’. Entering an ISBN is the fastest and most accurate way to search, and you will be taken straight to the lowest four prices from dozens of vendors. From the results page you can go straight to the vendor and purchase the book for the lowest price! If you entered a title or author first, you will first be taken to a list of search results. Find the book you are looking for and either click the title or click ‘Compare Prices’ to be taken to the results page.
Here is a preview of the gadget, resized to fit this page:
Adding the Gadget to your iGoogle page or Desktop
You can add the BookSpy gadget anywhere you can place a gadget (ie iGoogle, Google Desktop) with the following link: 
. Alternatively, you can go to your iGoogle page, and add the gadget by searching through the directory.
To add a gadget the Desktop via the Desktop Sidebar:
- At the top of the Sidebar, click Add.
- Type the URL for a gadget spec into the Search gadgets text field and then click Search gadgets. If the gadget is found, its title is displayed next to an Add button. Click Add.
Adding the Gadget to your webpage or blog
You can get low book price search results on your webpage or blog by following this link. From here you can get the code for the gadget and even choose its size to match your requirements!
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I would just like to thank a user who recently contacted me about problems viewing the mobile bookscouting tools on certain cellular devices. All errors were fixed, and the site has now been verified on both older Nokia and Samsung phones, as well as Verizon smart phones with Windows 5. Please let me know if you run into any more bugs.
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Bad news everyone. It appears that google friend connect has some trouble with internet explorer. If you are an internet explorer user, please hold tight, as we try to find a workaround to this problem. All of your book reviews and book recommendations have been saved, and we hopefully should have a fix by the end of the week. If you have not tried it already, I also suggest trying another browser like Firefox, which is more secure.
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We are proud to announce a few new features over at BookSpy.net. First, on the homepage, you will find a place to recommend books to the next site visitor, or even ask for a recommendation. If you sign in with google you will be notified when someone responds to your request or answers your question or book suggestion. We hope users will take advantage of this feature, and offer new ideas that may make it more useful. Second, we added an easy way to share or bookmark the book you find when searching for books. There is a small toolbar on the results page that lets you bookmark it to a few popular bookmarking services as well as Digg and Reddit. Finally, we have added a box containing books that you may be interested in based on your search history at the bottom of the results page. Stay tuned for more updates and features!
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The first order of business is the introduction of your new extensive help wiki. This will allow us to upload useful tips and hints for both book buyers and book scouts. We will be filling the pages with tips for scouting for books in the near future, so be sure to check back often! The help section is already well populates, so if you have not already, go check it out.
The second order of business is that we have made some improvements to our mobile book scout tools. First, the pages load 20% faster, which is great for rural areas. Second, we rearranged the price comparison and amazon rank after entering an ISBN. The sales rank is now shown first on the page, followed by prices, so users of older mobile phones can see that information first without scrolling down, making book price comparison a bit easier.
Finally, we would just like to remind our users that we would love to hear of suggestions or features that they would like implemented. Either leave a comment here, or send us an e-mail at oxfordbooks@gmail.com letting us know what you think!
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Used books are everywhere. Used books are in people’s homes, used books are in libraries, used books are online, in thriftstores, at garage sales, in your newspaper, in…well you get the picture. A lot of these books are firewood basically, that you do not want in your house or office. Others can net a 10,000% profit. Just remember, when looking for books, never buy without knowing its value. Use scout tools such as the free one offered at bookspy.net. Here are a few ways you can net used books:
- Craigslist- Run a craigslist ad offering to buy used books. You will get all kinds of responses to this. Again, check before you buy or offer low.
- Local Newspaper Ads – Again, run an ad offering to buy books. You will get everything from little old ladies offering you 500 romance books, to college students looking to make a little money.
- Booksalefinder.com – Hit up your local friends of the library book sales. This is often where the big money comes in. Just be aware that some libraries are looking up books themselves and keeping the good ones! Skip over these libraries if you find any doing this.
- Thrift stores – These tend to get picked over quickly by other booksellers, but if you live in rural area, or there are not many booksellers in your area, these can be a goldmine.
- eBay – Finally, you can look for underpriced books on eBay. This one takes a bit more time investment, and a bit of hard work. Ocassionally it can pay off though.
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When you go to buy used books online,you need to keep a few things in mind: is your credit/debit card number safe, are you getting a deal on the book, and is the shipping price reasonable?. The big names in bookselling tend to be more trustworthy, but independent booksellers tend to offer the
best prices.
The good news is, you can get small-vendor pricing through well-known online bookstores. Several big-name book sellers have established online storefronts that allow you to pay through them, but buy from independent seller. The most well known is Amazon, Half.com (owned by Ebay), Buy.com and Barnes and Noble’s BN.com.
Searching for the best deal
If you’re in a hurry and can’t visit each site individually, I suggest you use the BookSpy.net search engine, at http://www.bookspy.net/. This site searches dozens of online bookstores, including the big ones like Amazon and Half.com. This is a search site, so when you go to buy the book, you are taken to the merchants website, so your credit card info is not used until you actually buy the book from the trusted seller.
Shipping & Handling
The last thing you need to keep in mind is the price of shipping. Major sites offer a fixed price, but independent stores may be able to charge more. Always take this into consideration when buying a book, and you will be sure to save.
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Summer classes are starting up for many this week, so that means people need to start ordering my textbooks. Buying textbooks is always a big drain on a students money because of the inflated costs involved. During my undergraduate years, I would often spend upwards of $400 on textbooks every semester. Occassionally, I would get a book written by my professor that cost $97 used. Big surprise isn’t it?
Textbook prices are out of control – however, there are plenty of places online to buy textbooks on the cheap. Below is a list of places to buy cheap textbooks that have proven useful:
- BookSpy.net – BookSpy is a book price comparison site. What this means is that you search by title, author, or ISBN, and get back a list of the lowest prices from dozens of online retailers. This includes both used and new books. I would recommend a price comparison site as one of the first places you go if you need to actually buy the book.
- Amazon
, Half.com
, Alibris
, eCampus
– These are the major players in places to buy cheap books. They are searched by BookSpy, but in the event that the website is down, these are the first places I would recommend.
- Craigslist – Try your local craigslist, a lot of college students sell textbooks via this method. Moderately reliable, you just have to keep searching every day.
- PaperBackSwap – Not as reliable, but I did get one schoolbook this way. Basically you put up copies of your books you don’t want, and you can swap for a book someone else has. Not very reliable.
- Your LIBRARY! – Yes, your library. Most school libraries have stocks of books that are needed for your class, you just need to reserve the copy early. You can then copy the book. This is by far the cheapest method. If you cannot get your book at your library, try WorldCat.org. It searches all the libraries near you to see if the book is available. Finally, you could utilize your libraries interlibrary loan system, and request a book be sent. Most of the time this service is also free.
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