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Every quarter, we brace ourselves and our wallets for the ordeal of purchasing textbooks. Sometimes, we luck out with a $15 anthology or an $8 reference book. Sometimes our instructors are kind enough to place most of our required text as downloadable articles online. Sadly, some books will cost as much as $125 or more. Welcome to Textbook Hades.As a writer, I love the incredibly distant dream of selling individual books for the price of a surf n’ turf entree at Daniel’s Broiler in Seattle. As a student on a budget, nothing gets my necklace more twisted than an expensive textbook—especially one I will probably never read after the quarter ends. Sorry, Contemporary Art. (I love you, Dr. Erpf.)
Luckily, alternatives to the horror of Textbook Hades exist.
Rent a book. For some texts, SCAD’s bookstore offers the option to rent a used copy at a fraction of the price of buying new. Who knows? You could luck out and get an edition previously used by a genius who took excellent notes in the margins.
Surf for sales. When it comes to cheap textbooks, the Internet is your low price leader for both new and used books. Excellent sites include Chegg, Amazon, AbeBooks, Half.com (Ebay), BIGWORDS. Sites like Chegg and Amazon offer the option of renting textbooks with free return shipping. AbeBooks and BIGWORDS also have a buyback program.
Get digital. If you have an e-reader, many of your textbooks are available at a discounted price from some of the sites mentioned above. Additionally, sites like CafeScribe, Inkling and Pageburst offer digital textbooks with accompanying note-taking tools, guides and apps to help with studying.
Make a friend. It pays, or rather saves, to get to know your fellow students. You may find that some of them are interested in loaning you their textbook or sharing the cost of a textbook. This is a triple-win situation because you save money, get a built-in study buddy and cultivate a meaningful relationship.
Love your local library. SCAD’s library often keeps copies of textbooks in circulation or in their reference section. If there’s no copy available for checkout don’t waste your change on the copy machine by the magazines. Instead, save a tree and use the library’s nifty scanner to digitally copy chapters to a flash drive. Yes, it takes a lot of time but just think of all the graphic tees you can buy with your savings.
Make the investment. If all else fails and you still have to shell out the cheddar, remember that SCAD’s bookstore, as well as other textbook sellers, will buy back your book. Just think of it as a ten week bond with no interest accrued and a smaller return. Then again, you can always just keep the book, place it strategically on your home bookshelf or coffee table and use it to impress your guests and potential love interests.