How to Spell College

Drill it into your head that your campus bookstore is overpriced. But using a combination of these methods, I’ve saved hundreds of dollars on books. (My personal record for biggest savings was a $180 pair of textbooks at the bookstore for $18 total online—that’s including shipping!)

Condensed instructions for the most popular method: buying books online
Step 1. Get the ISBN for the book you need. It’s on the back cover.
Step 2. Search for the best prices on http://dealoz.com and http://bigwords.com/. They look through all the dozens of online merchants and compare prices for you, but they don’t always list the same places, so you’ll have to use both search engines.
Step 3. Use http://www.retailmenot.com/ to search for coupon codes before settling on what appears to be the cheapest option. You would enter amazon.com, abebooks.com, or whatever.

These are the same steps but with important but often neglected details spelled out:

Step 1. Get your list of required books.

(For BU: Go to bu.edu/studentlink, click on “Current Schedule” under Academics, log in, and click “Buy Books” on the left. Click OK or whatever a bunch of times. Not all your courses might have the books up yet though. Some profs never even put them online. They’re probably busy writing their own books… OHH.. and while you’re there, check out all your professors’ depressing photos!! Click on “Instructors” on your current schedule page. Woooo mug shots!)

Step 2. Get the ISBN of each book you need to buy. (The ISBN is the unique International Standard Book Number on the back of a book or on its inside copyright page. It guarantees you’ll have the same exact edition and printing as your professor’s book.)

Even if you find a book with the same title and author, it doesn’t necessarily mean you found the right one! Only the ISBN guarantees you’ve found the right edition and printing.

How do you get the ISBN?

- Your list of required books might list all the ISBNs. In that case, skip to step 3. (BU’s doesn’t.)

- If this is over the summer or winter break and you want to buy your books NOW so they’ll ship to you before the first day of class:

• Check the old semesters on your college course archive to see if the syllabus and required books are listed (for BU: http://courseinfo.bu.edu). Make sure the old semester’s books match this semester’s. If your prof didn’t list your required books yet but you found the required ones from last semester’s syllabus, I wouldn’t jump the gun and assume the prof is using the same books this semester.
• If the old syllabus doesn’t list the ISBNs, email the professor to ask for the ISBNs. It’s a good excuse to introduce yourself too!
• If all the above steps failed, use Amazon’s product details. If you need “The Prophet, by Gibran; Knopf, 73,” type in “prophet gibran” at amazon.com. Click on each search result and scroll down to the “Product Details.” Find the one published by Knopf in 1973 (your university’s setup might take the 73 to mean 73rd edition though—use common sense to figure out what the number means). When you find the right one, copy the “ISBN-10″ or “ISBN-13″ number listed. Either is fine. (Oh, and The Prophet is the only book I think every human should read, by the way. There’s a reason why it has hundreds of perfect Amazon reviews.)

- If you’re already on campus:

• Go to your college bookstore. Go to your course’s bookshelf. Copy down the ISBN number from the back of each required book.
• Or if you received your class syllabus already and it lists ISBN numbers, you don’t need to go to your bookstore (unless you want to compare prices).

Step 3. Once you have the ISBN for a book, use http://dealoz.com (formerly CampusI) and http://bigwords.com/ to find the cheapest option online (they search through half.com, amazon.com, and many more merchants to conveniently list the best deals for you). Check both sites. Sometimes one mentions a seller that the other doesn’t. You’ll notice that half.com and amazon.com are not always the cheapest, even if thousands of students swear by them!

Find a copy that’s the right balance between price and condition for you. For some classes, you might not care if you buy a super cheap but super beat-up book, whereas for other classes, you might want to spend some extra money to buy new books so you can depend on your own highlighting and keep the book for years.

Don’t be afraid of the super duper cheap international student editions! Other than being paperback and having black and white photos, they’re the exact same thing as the regular editions. Even their page numbers will match. (Don’t quote me on that, but at least it’s been true for all the ones I’ve ever bought.)

Step 4. Also check http://www.retailmenot.com/ for coupon codes before settling on what appears to be the cheapest merchant. (You would enter amazon.com, half.com, abebooks.com, or whatever. Half.com rarely has coupons though.) You’ll probably find coupons only about 10% of the time, but you can still test your luck with this step.

Step 5. After you buy it online with standard shipping, you’ll have to wait 1-2 weeks before you receive it. In the meantime, maybe buy it from the campus bookstore and return it for a full refund by the returns deadline. Or hang out at the bookstore and read what you need to there. Or pay for expedited shipping with all the money you saved!

P.S. It seems as if many people are scared of buying books online because they need to give away their credit card numbers and whatnot online. Just remember that all the sites (amazon, half, ebay, abebooks, a1books, etc.) you’ll find listed by DealOz and BigWords are legit and that even if there are some poorly rated merchants on those sites, the sites are the ones who handle your payments and can get your money back if you simply file a complaint against johndoe-the-bastard-merchant-who-never-sent-you-a-book (which has never ever happened to anyone I know). All you need to be careful about is when the book you want to buy is being sold by a seller with really poor ratings (let’s say janedoe, who has 2 stars out of 5 and has only sold 3 books with his username). You’ll still get the book, but its condition might be a bit worse than you expected. This can happen every now and then if you’re buying from a merchant with few and/or poor reviews. Life goes on. You still saved money. If you’re still super paranoid about online shopping, then there are still other ways of saving money:

Additional Wonderfully Delicious Methods for Money-Saving on Books:

- Buy the book on Facebook marketplace or through your friends.

- Buy the book through your university’s Facebook textbook selling and buying group. (BU’s: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76895628911)

- If it’s a little paperback, buy it from the campus bookstore (*shudder*). Sometimes it’s actually the cheapest option because you don’t need to pay for shipping. So once you get hooked on buying cheap books online, don’t forget this traditional way. And hey, if you bump into a friend who’s about to sell their soul to the bookstore, tell them about this awesomely useful blog post. =)

- Buy an electronic copy of it. Amazon offers them sometimes and they’re usually cheaper. Or download it (legally, of course…).

- Borrow it from the public library or the college library. Factor in one renewal and time it out so you have the book right before an exam or for writing a paper. Ask about the details for someone putting it on hold. You wouldn’t want the book snatched from you right before exams.

- Read it in the bookstore. It forces you to sit down to study. (And you have the chance to meet fellow bookstore roamers who are usually smart and driven. If you’re looking for potential dates, these people are gold! Saved money, got your reading done on time, AND met your new date. Score!) (P.S. If you recognize me at the BU Bookstore—where I sometimes live—say hello and let me know how much money you saved because of this article! lol)

- Read the copy put on reserve at your university library. (But not all profs put one there.)

- Borrow it from a classmate. (It’s a good excuse to umm.. ya know.. get together.)

- Borrow it from your professor. Go to their office and tell them that you can’t afford the textbook. Ask if they have an extra copy you can borrow. While you’re in their office, discuss your interest in the class, your career plans, etc. Perfect bondage time with your professor! Oooops, I meant bonding!

- Rent it through http://chegg.com for cheaper prices than buying books online. Of course you don’t get to keep the book though. This is sometimes a positive, since you won’t have to deal with the hassle of selling the book afterwards.

- Buy it and split the price with a classmate. Sometimes professors want you to buy the whole book even if you’ll be reading just one or two good chapters from it.

- Purposely buy an older edition of the book. Usually not that much changes from one edition to the next. Then maybe check with a classmate or at the bookstore to catch up on what you’re missing.

- Buy a copy of the textbook without the accompanying CD. I’ve never had a prof who required us to use the textbook CD.

- If the book is a classic, you can read it online for free at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page . It’s an archive of all the books that are old enough to be in the public domain. All the oldies by Shakespeare and Plato are on there, as well as books by more “recent” authors, such as Twain and Oscar Wilde. Check to see if your books are there. (Reading it online has an extra advantage: you can easily copy and paste important passages and condense the book down to what you really need.)

- Google it. Remember that “Prophet” book I recommended? For some reason it’s not on Gutenberg, but a simple Google search for “prophet gibran” finds dozens of copies of it online for free. Reeeeead it (it’ll take 2 hours max) and send me an email to discuss it. You’ll be my new best friend. Really. We’ll have some good bondage time together.

- This one is ultra-risky, but maybe don’t even read the “required” book at all. If word-of-mouth and ratemyprofessors.com (which isn’t always the best way to choose professors) say you won’t be tested on the reading, you might go this route. Of course this might take away from your learning experience, but sometimes you need the courage to read and learn what you want to. I have a bad (or is it good?) habit of reading a stack of books on similar topics for free at the bookstore or library, and sometimes just skimming the required ones. Hey, profs get very impressed by my additional knowledge. Free brownie points!

Good luck with the process! And remember to tell other students not to sell their souls to their campus bookstore. Use your extra saved cash to buy something useful, like red cups and ping pong balls… or all those magical items in late-night infomercials. Or maybe you can even adopt an endangered koala. Too bad you’re usually not allowed to pack them for your dorm.

- by Nathan Chow
Boston University student