I don’t know about you, but I have spent my fair share of paychecks on textbooks over the last few years. Now that classes are starting up again, I wanted to provide some tips on how to save money on textbooks, and the exact places I shop to find cheap textbooks.

As an English major, I don’t use as many actual textbooks as other majors, but I do go through literature books and anthologies like they’re going out of style. Most of my professors aim to help us find the cheapest editions or books that have PDFs online, and for that I am immensely grateful, although the books can still cost a pretty penny if you’re not sure how to get them cheaper.

Here’s my ultimate list of tips and tricks for saving money on textbooks. Learn from my experience and read this before you go to the bookstore!

Table of Contents

Tips for Saving Money on Textbooks:

Below are a number of tips that should help you save some dough on textbooks over the upcoming school year.

1. Rent

I’ve only done this a few times, though I know many people who do this frequently. It depends on the book whether or not it will be available to rent.

I’ve had the most luck renting books for general education courses. Most people need to take these classes, though they’re not likely to need the book after the class, so renting in these situations is incredibly useful.

For instance, I rented an Introduction to Speech book that was used only for quizzes. It was around $90 to rent, with a retail price of maybe twice that, and I returned it to my bookstore at the end of the term. This saved me a lot of money and hassle.