Hey, what's up guys?
So, today we are gonna talk about textbooks.
And I wanna bring to bear
all the knowledge that I've gained,
both as a recent college graduate
and also as a quite adept user of Google,
if I do say so myself, to help you pay
as little money as possible for these things.
And before we get into the thick of it,
I just wanna mention that I wrote an article
a little while ago that goes into more in-depth detail
on each of the tips that I'm gonna go through in this video
and also provides links
to many of the resources that I talk about.
So, if you wanna check that out after watching
or maybe just right now, you can click my face
or the card or the thing down in the doobity-bibbity-bop,
or if you have telepathic powers,
you can just go to it with those.
Either way, let's get into it.
So, in my experience, the process
to getting the best possible deal on your textbooks
starts by getting the list of the books you need
as early as you possibly can.
As with most things in life,
giving yourself ample time to prepare
will result in the best possible outcome.
By getting the list of the books you need early,
you give yourself time to hunt for bargains,
but you also give yourself time to e-mail your professors.
And this is what I did as a student,
what I recommend doing, just e-mail them,
introduce yourself briefly
and ask them two different questions.
Number one, how often is the book going to be used?
And number two, is it okay to buy
an old edition of the book,
or do you absolutely need the current edition?
And when you e-mail, just make sure you're polite
and let 'em know that you're just trying
to be budget-conscious.
In my experience, most professors completely understand.
And once you have these two pieces of information,
you can start doing a couple of different things.
Number one, if the book is not gonna be used very often,
then you might actually be able to just go to the library
and find a version they have for free
or you can decide to share a copy of the book
with somebody in your class.
Secondly, if it turns out you don't need
the current edition,
then that means you can buy an old edition.
And in my experience, I've gotten old editions
of textbooks that cost like $87
for the newest edition for $1 on Amazon.
So, it really can be worth it.
And let's face it, a lot of textbooks
do not need a new edition every couple of years.
Like, if you're taking a French history class as a gen-ed,
then you don't need to know about all the minute discoveries
about the Napoleonic Wars that have happened since 2013.
If you're really that curious,
you can just go to the Wikipedia page
and look at the citations for new books.
But, you're not that curious.
Now, the alternative to e-mailing your professors
and asking about books
or the plan of action if they don't reply
is what I like to call book gambling.
And this is the act of simply waiting
until the semester begins to buy your books
to figure out if you really need them or not.
And as a student, my policy with book gambling was this:
if I could get the book within one day
if I really needed it,
then I would go ahead and book gamble.
Otherwise, I took the safe road and bought the book
as cheaply as possible before the semester started
because some classes really get into the thick of it
during the first week.
And, to me, it really wasn't worth the stress
of falling behind just to save a couple of bucks.
All right, for the next step of the process,
let's talk about the library.
If you go to a big enough university,
there's a good chance that some of your textbooks
can be found at your library.
However, I really wouldn't trust copies of the book
that can be checked out by other students
because, when it comes test time
or when it comes time that you really need the book,
it's likely to be gone.
So, what you wanna look for are reserve copies,
which are copies of the book
that the library will let people use
in the building, but not check out.
And with those, you have a much better chance
of getting your hands on one when you do need it.
Aside from using the library,
the other way to absolve yourself
from at least some of the financial responsibility
of buying books is to share them with other students.
And the best way to do this
is to wait until the semester starts
and to find a group or partner in class
that you can share with, but this requires book gambling.
So, one thing you can do if you don't wanna book gamble
is to use Facebook groups to potentially find students
who you can share books with.
To do this, you can just search for
your university class of 2016
or whatever your graduation year is
and then you can probably find
many different official groups for that year.
And in there, you can make a post
just asking if anybody is taking your class
and would like to share a book.
Also, it's a good idea to search for other graduation years,
since lots of different students from different years
might be in your class.
All right, so now we have finally made it
to the point in the process
where you actually have to start buying your books.
And in a moment, I'm gonna talk about
several different websites and online resources
you can use to get the best deals.
But before that, I wanna talk about
what might be the absolute best deal in your area,
getting books from other students.
There are probably a lot of students on your campus
who have already taken the classes you're gonna take.
And the ones that still own their textbooks
might be willing to sell 'em to you for cheap.
If you can make these kinda deals happen,
they're usually win-win for both parties,
since, on their end, they're gonna get more
than the campus bookstore would give them,
which is two pennies and a pile of leaves,
and on your end, you're going to pay less
than that campus bookstore would charge you.
If you live on campus and you happen to live
around a lot of people with the same major as you,
then these deals are usually pretty easy to put together.
Otherwise, Facebook groups are, once again, a good option.
And if you have any specific sort of
on-campus messaging system or bulletin board,
then you can try those as well.
In the case that older students refuse
to sell you their textbooks
and instead they give you a swirlie
and steal your lunch money,
well then, here are your other options.
And I wanna start with the oddball ones,
starting with one called Boundless.
Now, this is actually kind of the wrong section of the video
to put boundless in, but it fits because it's a website.
Boundless doesn't actually charge you for their textbooks.
Instead, they make open source online textbooks,
which use open source Creative Commons data,
but they structure it in the way
that many popular textbooks do.
So, if you don't need a specific textbook for your class,
but you do just need a general outline
of the information in detail,
then a lot of their subjects may be suitable for your needs.
The second oddball site I wanna talk about
is called Packback Books.
And this is gonna be useful for those times
when you have a textbook that's required,
but is not used very often.
Basically, what Packback does
is allows you to rent digital textbooks for $5 a day.
So, instead of having to rent it for an entire semester
and pay like $40 or $50 or whatever,
if you just need the book
for two different tests throughout the semester,
then you end up paying just $10 for two days of renting.
Now, if those sites don't work for you,
then there are plenty
of traditional textbook sites out there.
And the ones that I used as a student
include Amazon, Chegg and TextbookRush,
but there are plenty of others like AbeBooks,
BookRenter, Textbooks.com, and many, many others.
And because there are so many of these,
I recommend using a price comparison tool
to compare the prices across all of them.
And the ones that I know about specifically
include StudentRate Textbooks, SlugBooks, and BigWords.
With any of these tools,
you can just put in the book's ISBN number
or the title or the author and then it'll pull up the book
and query all of the different sites out there
to figure out which one has the lowest price.
It's also good to note
that you have several different options
for the formats of the books you wanna get.
For instance, you can buy or rent,
you can go physical or digital,
or you can get combinations of both.
For instance, as a student,
I made use of digital rentals a lot.
And you also might be able to find international editions
of the books you need.
These are often black-and-white instead of color
or a paperback instead of hardcover,
but usually they have the exact same content
and are much cheaper.
Two last things to know here:
number one, don't discount brick and mortar stores.
If you have a secondhand bookstore in your area,
or if your campus bookstore sells used editions,
then you might actually find a better price there
than you can online.
And secondly, if you're gonna plan on
selling your textbooks at the end of the semester,
then go on Amazon and see
what the buyback prices are right now
because you might actually come out ahead
if you buy and subsequently sell than if you rent.
All right, so that is the point
where we're gonna wrap this video.
Now, I know you might be in a weird situation
where maybe your school forces you to buy new books
or maybe you have to buy one of those books
that comes with an online code that can only be used once,
which I absolutely hate those kind of books.
But, in any case, hopefully you've found a least a couple
of useful tips in this video that can save you money
on at least a few of the books
you have to buy in the future.
Once again, if you'd like to dig into the article
I wrote for this video that has even more detail,
you can click the card or link
down in the doobity-bobbity-bibbity-bop.
And if you have tips that I didn't mention in this video,
share 'em below in the comments
so other people can benefit from 'em.
That's all I've got for this week,
so if you enjoyed this video and you found it helpful,
then give it a like to support this channel
and I will see you in next week's video.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat electronic music)
Hey there guys, thanks so much for watching this video.
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so check it out if you missed it.
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