Top 5 Textbook Sites For Purchasing Textbooks

By Walbert Castillo on January 12, 2015

It’s that time of year again when students are scurrying away to purchase textbooks before the semester begins.

According to a survey done by the Student Public Internet Research Group, seven out of 10 undergraduates had not purchased one or more textbooks because the price was too costly. The majority of college students resort to different alternatives to save money on books.

Veronica Mullen, a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said her first option is to rent textbooks at the nearest bookstore on campus; however, if the book is not available, she says she usually resorts to purchasing her books on Amazon.

Renting out your textbook from a local bookstore or some place online is cheaper than purchasing the book. So if you ever see the rent-a-book option, take advantage of that before you spend more money on retail price.

There are a multitude of online bookstores that offer students a much lower price than at their university. If you’re a Facebook user, you’re bound to stumble upon a book exchange group related to your university.

Honkwon Lee, a junior at Northwestern, said, “I sometimes resort to purchasing my books on Ebay, Amazon and sometimes the Northwestern Textbook Exchange Facebook group.”

As students, it is our job to be as resourceful as possible so I have provided you with a list that will alleviate you from the stress of spending too much on books.

Amazon 

Known to be one of the largest Internet-based retailers in the United States, Amazon does a great job with servicing goods to people across the world. What better way to purchase and rent textbooks than through this very site?

Amazon offers the greatest deals you can find for the textbooks that you’ve been patiently looking for. Amazon offers many alternatives in regards to purchasing textbooks; they will give you the option of purchasing the textbook new or used.

Amazon offers 80 percent in discounts to all textbook rentals. In addition, if you are subscribed to Amazon unlimited, you can have access to 700,00 self-published and traditional books on Kindle for only $9.99 a month.

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Chegg

Founded in 2005 and based in California, Chegg not only adheres to textbook rentals, but also provides students with homework help, scholarships, course reviews, etc.

One interesting fact about Chegg is that it is the combination of both the words chicken and egg because the founders of the company could not find a job after college. Since they didn’t have experience, companies turned them down. However, they found this to be ironic because without a job, you can’t get experiences, which leaves us with the ultimate question — which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Neebo

Neebo, a leading supplier for college textbooks nationwide, is offering an incentive for students to save money on textbooks. If students sell their books from their fall semester in time, Neebo will give students double for what you paid for the book originally. For example if you were to sell your textbook to Neebo for $10, you would receive $20 in total, meaning you’d receive $10 in extra cash.

Neebo supports more than 2,000 college bookstores across the nation so if you’re having trouble selling your book to someone at your school, Neebo would be happy to take your book unless it’s badly damaged.

Another neat method that entices students to purchase textbooks from Neebo is the price matching deal guarantee. Students can match the price of the textbooks from any other company selling it for less.

BigWords

According to the BigWords home page, you can save up to $1,000 on average annually on textbooks if you purchase or rent your textbooks from this company. One of the great things about BigWords is that it acts as a search engine. In addition, this website offers a wide selection of novels, DVD’s, games and music.

By comparing different prices of books on varying websites, you can easily find the cheapest textbooks around. After the customer types in the title of the book in the search bar, BigWords makes it easier on its customers by calculating the total price on the project, which includes shipping and promotional discounts.

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AbeBooks Inc.

An online marketplace for books, AbeBooks Inc., offers a wide selection of books you can purchase.

According to their website, “AbeBooks Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. AbeBooks, an online bookselling pioneer, was acquired in 2008 and remains a stand-alone operation with headquarters in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and a European office in Dusseldorf, Germany.”

One neat thing about AbeBooks is that you can find new, used, rare and out of print books. If you are writing a research paper and you cannot find any of the information online, you can rely on AbeBooks to locate the missing materials required to finish up your paper.

Image via: http://www.abebooks.de

*And while you’re here, check out uloop.com’s renting and selling textbook services!

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