The university should put the required books ISBN's online, then you could skip that step.
Ordering Textbooks
- Thread starter LeSchmick
- Start date
The university should put the required books ISBN's online, then you could skip that step.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
I just ordered all my Fall books from half.com. The bookstore listed them used for a total of $875 and the total from half.com was $475. Assuming everything goes to plan, I'll be using this for now on. Has anyone had any bad luck with getting their stuff from sellers?
Half.com is like eBay or any other site where you deal with individual sellers. Most sellers are pretty good, but sometimes you'll run into some bad ones. I've been happy using half.com before, but I wouldn't trust it if I had to have a book fast.
I checked Amazon first and didn't get much better prices than the bookstore. Maybe there will be more used books as the term draws near or maybe some of my books were pretty new but I didn't really find many used books anywhere.
Use Bigwords.com!
Use Bigwords.com!
Use Bigwords.com!
No, seriously. I found that site two years ago and have been using it ever since. It's basically a search engine for textbooks. You plug in the ISBN's of everything you need, and it searches a zillion sites, calculates shipping, and figures out the cheapest possible combination of buying what books from which sites, then gives you a foolproof checklist (complete with links) to go buy every book. I've saved about 45-65% off of UBS prices every single semester. I absolutely love the thing.
Use Bigwords.com!
Use Bigwords.com!
No, seriously. I found that site two years ago and have been using it ever since. It's basically a search engine for textbooks. You plug in the ISBN's of everything you need, and it searches a zillion sites, calculates shipping, and figures out the cheapest possible combination of buying what books from which sites, then gives you a foolproof checklist (complete with links) to go buy every book. I've saved about 45-65% off of UBS prices every single semester. I absolutely love the thing.
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International Standard Book Number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I second what someone said previously. I rented books through Chegg for my last 3 years, saved myself a ton of money. And if you think you want to keep the book you have an option to buy it at the end of the semester as well.
I just went to Amazon or similar sites and bought the international editions (still written in English) online. They have really cheap pages that rip, black & white pictures, and are paperback books, but for under $100 I got all 6 books that have the exact same information as the "regular" ones.
do different versions or editions of a book have a different ISBN? Just so i know I am ordering the right edition.
For almost all of my grad student books I bought the international version off of Amazon.com. It was amazing. They were the same book except with a soft cover instead of a hard cover. And about 75% less than the US edition.
I used this site all last year and had absolutely no problems and saved a ton of money.
if you buy these books from sites like bigwords.com or others what is the best way to sell them back?
Bigwords doesn't actually sell books, it's just a really excellent search engine that does all the price-shopping for you. You can actually sell your books back through them the exact same way. I always do that, and select the place that gives me the most money back but pays for the shipping. If you don't want to do that, you can always sell them back to UBS, CBS, or the handful of other places that pop up in Ames at the end of every semester. You won't get as much money back (and in the case of CBS, you'll be financially supporting criminals) but it's quick and easy.