Ways to get better prices on textbooks

Danny Carlton · August 8, 2008

Received via Email from our local HS support group...

Having just grudgingly paid $122 for a softcover, skinny "new edition"
textbook at TCC for Carole, but having saved about twice that much shopping
for Michael's textbooks online, I thought I'd pass on some tips for
textbooks. If you have some others, maybe you could share them, too!

Once you identify the exact book (edition, volume, etc) you can use a
multi-website search engine. One that I just discovered that is very good is
http://www.campusI.com. It had not only the posted prices from assorted websites,
but also coupon deals that I wouldn't have known about.
It told me that Borders has 30% off one item: CODE IS OAP2008.
Others are CheapestTextbooks.com and Booksprice.com.

Amazon has great prices and I can often get a new book for less than the
campus bookstore's used prices. This is helpful for books that your student
might want to keep. Also, I have often used the reliable Amazon Marketplace
sellers, who have good prices and you can get a pretty good idea of the
exact condition of what you are buying.
One advantage of Amazon is FREE 2 day shipping on orders over $25 (doesn't
apply to Marketplace).

FOR classic books your student may be required to read, try Project
Gutenberg.org. It has 25,000 FREE books that you can download or just read
right from the website. Dante, Austen, Dickens, Homer---they have lots of
books!

The Wall Street Journal for Aug 6 had an article on saving on texbooks. It
described textbook rental services (Chegg.com, Bookrenter.com, and
CampusBookRentals.com)
It mentioned also electronic textbooks you can get from publisher sites at a
reduced price for a 6 month subscription: Course-Smart.com is Pearson and
McGrawHill's site. Also mentioned was Caf

Annie · August 8, 2008

Good idea for a thread! http://www.addall.com is a price comparison search engine that I use frequently to buy school books. The average total cost of homeschooling for me each year is around $450 (for three kids). If I spent what the retailers ask for the same books, I'd be spending several hundred dollars more. I like to buy books that are not consumable, so that I'll have them for the next child coming up. Examples: Rod and Staff English, Saxon math starting in third grade. I paid nothing this year for my third grader's math curriculum, and only $4.50 for his English curriculum (test/worksheet packet). Below are the totals per child that I spent for this next year.

First grader (subjects: Bible, phonics, literature, history, science, handwriting, spelling, math): Total of $40.50.

Third grader (Bible, literature, English, Latin, history, science, handwriting, spelling, math): Total of $28.85

Fifth grader (Bible, literature, English, Latin, history, science, handwriting, spelling, math): Total of $280.00

Total cost for this year's curriculum: right at $350.00.

We LOVE the local library! :thumb