Six ways to save cash on course materials p1 - Military - Education Strategies and Tips - Military Times EDGE

If your soul — and your bank account — hurt every time you have to fork over hundreds of dollars for a college textbook, you’re not alone.

In fact, the pain is so widespread that Congress has gotten involved. Bills were introduced in the House and Senate in 2007 that tried to change how publishers price and market their products. The legislation was never signed into law, but students these days have their own law: Never pay full price at the college bookstore if you can help it. And fortunately, there are many ways to help it.

• Web sites such as Amazon.com, Half.com and Abebooks.com are the obvious place to start looking for used books. Search by ISBN number to make sure you get the exact edition you need.

• Ask your professor if you can use a previous edition. The differences between textbook editions can be slight, but the differences in price can be huge. You might have to photocopy new end-of-chapter quizzes from a friend, but it could save you big bucks.

• If used copies are scarce, turn to the global market. Textbook companies price their books to market conditions, which means you can sometimes get an identical textbook overseas for a fraction of the U.S. price. For example, new hardback copies of “Molecular Biology of the Cell” sell at Amazon.com for $126.65; even with shipping, you can get the same book from Amazon.co.uk for $100.56.

• Avoid shipping charges altogether at Campusbookswap.com, an online bulletin board that connects buyers and sellers on the same campus and lets them make their own deal.

• If you’ve had enough of humping a heavy pack, you can lighten the load on your back and your wallet with an online textbook subscription at CourseSmart.com. Thousands of texts are available. The site claims the average savings per textbook was about $60. Of course, you won’t be able to re-sell your books at the end of the semester ...

• ... but maybe you don’t want to deal with that anyway. In that case, you might like Chegg.com or BookRenter.com, where you can rent textbooks a lá Netflix for significant savings.

Even cheaper options could be in store. Stay tuned as Congress considers new bills that would provide grants to develop open-source (free!) textbooks for post-secondary coursework. Now that’s a law we could get behind.