Category | Op Ed

Buying textbooks online saves $

Published on November 17, 2009 by Austin James Green

So you are registered for classes, and you start looking at all the books your professors require. Unsure if they will actually use the textbook, you walk into University Bookstore or the General Bookstore and buy the entire list of textbooks. By the time you walk out you have spent at least $250 on four or five textbooks, and that is a very conservative estimate.

Juniors and seniors are probably spending up to $400 on upper-division textbooks. At the end of the semester you take that stack of books back to the bookstore for buy back, and if you are lucky, you might get $100, leaving you feeling ripped off and broke.

Factor that in with the rising tuition costs and additional school fees such as our beloved (mandatory) meal plan and lest we forget the newest $35 fee that SGA approved to complete the recreation center off of Busbee Parkway. Sure, that $35 fee is not a lot, but it adds to the mounting fees and out of pocket expenses students have to pay and the result is less money to spend on textbooks. Whoever is pulling the strings might need to recheck his or her priorities, but at least there is a solution to purchasing books at a cheaper cost.

Allow me to introduce you to my textbook-shopping friends Amazon.com and Half.com. Of course everyone has probably heard of both Web sites, but some may not shop there for textbooks. These two sites are a great way to shop for used and new textbooks at prices that are significantly less than those at the campus bookstores. The biggest benefits to purchasing textbooks online is that you are able to help out another college student by taking a useless textbook off his or her hands, you keep a few extra dollars in your wallet, and when the semester is over you can resell those textbooks online and not feel ripped off.

My personal preference is Half.com, which is an eBay company. Unlike eBay, you do not have to bid on books,  just find what you are looking for and purchase it. Half.com I find a bit easier to use because its default search categorizes your results first by the condition of the book. Within each category the books are sorted based on their price, from least expensive to most expensive. Make sure to read the seller comments so you know the quality of book you are buying.

When looking at which book to buy, there are a few things you should look for. First is the feedback score. Try to avoid anyone who has negative feedback within the current year or a pattern of negative feedback. The other thing to consider when purchasing a book is the seller location. If you need a textbook within a week, you need to buy from someone who is in a nearby state; lets face it, when dealing with the post office (or any government agency) timeliness is not their strongest point.

When you are ready to get rid of those books you can sell them back online. The biggest benefit to selling them online is that you will either break even with what you initially spent on the textbook or you might make a profit. Selling books online is a bit more complicated and a little unnerving, so stick to a reputable selling site such as the ones mentioned above. With these sites be prepared to have a credit card number ready for verification purposes as well as a checking account to receive money from selling books.

Be fair when deciding on a selling price for your textbook. Consider what you paid for it, the condition it is in, as well as the price other sellers are listing. You don’t want to overprice your book just to make a profit, but you don’t want to undersell the book either. Sell it based on what you would be willing to pay for it. Also be honest with your description of the book. The higher your feedback score the more likely others will buy from you.

It was a General who burned Atlanta to the ground; don’t let him burn a hole in your wallet over textbooks. Take your money online and as Clark Howard would say, “save more, spend less, and avoid getting ripped off!”