By Caroline Lewis
Preparing for your first year in college is a liberating experience. Buying new things and getting ready for class is exciting. And since most freshmen live on campus and are already familiar with the campus bookstore (thank you, Preview), it naturally seems like the best place to start. Unfortunately, the campus bookstore is almost, if not always, the most expensive place to buy textbooks.
Four months after you buy them, bookstores will buy back your books for a fraction of the price because teachers stop using the text or new editions replace them. While at best, some textbooks have earned about half of the original cost, most books only earn about $5 or $10 when they were originally more than $100. Cheaper options are available. You just have to know where to look. Below we’ve listed a few ways you can do just that.
Get Off Campus
Something to consider when purchasing books is convenience. Bookstores around town are usually slightly cheaper than their on-campus and near-campus counterparts. Options include: The Florida Bookstore, Gator Textbooks, Orange and Blue Textbooks and B.I.G. Textbooks. When selling textbooks back to a bookstore, you can earn the most money back one to three weeks before a new semester starts.
Renting Your Books
Textbook rentals are also becoming more popular. The Florida Bookstore offers a way to rent a textbook for full price and receive about 50 percent back after returning the book. Chegg.com is a web site rental option that could save you more than 50 percent, and they promise to plant a tree for every book rented.
Use the Library’s Copy
Another way to save money is to use a library’s copy of the textbook. Library West usually has a version of most required books on reserve. If Library West doesn’t have one, then the smaller college-specific libraries probably do. For literature and novels, try the Alachua County Library that’s a short bike ride down University Avenue. This is a cheap alternative for skimming chapters and note-taking on specific parts of the text.
Going with the Web
Popular and reliable web sites like eBay, Amazon and Half.com are great ways to order textbooks cheaply. Prices for a used copy are usually about half that of a new book, even after shipping costs. Craigslist is another option, and Facebook’s marketplace is becoming increasingly popular to post textbook listings for a specific school.
Trading and swapping
Thriftier ways to get textbooks are trading or swapping. A UF- and Santa Fe College-specific web site is Swampboard.com, where students can create a free account and post the books they need and have to trade within the community. Swampboard also allows students to purchase textbooks.
A larger-scale trading site is Swaptree.com, a nationwide alternative to the more popular Internet textbook sources founded in 2005.
When a trade is found, items are swapped, and shipping is the only cost. Swaptree even allows you to print shipping labels directly from the site for a discounted rate, which is not only cheaper but more convenient than buying them at the post office.
