As a student at the beginning of a new semester, you’d be right to be shocked at the cost of all the textbooks for college that you need.At a staggering cost of approx. $100 for a new text book, the cost of studying is always continually rising. A U.S Government report revealed that in the eighteen years to 2004, the cost of a college text book has increased in price at more than twice the inflation rate.

Are there any ways to counter this huge expense? If you know where to look, yes, there are numerous possibilities. If you employ some of our ideas below, it is possible to make considerable savings on next semesters college text books.

Your on-campus bookshop is usually the fastest and easiest way to find the textbooks you need for college, however, it is often also the most expensive. However, if you get to the bookstore as soon as your reading list is published, you may be lucky enough to save some dollars by grabbing any used copies sold back to the store by last years students.

Furthermore, use the college bookstore for researching new and used prices of a particular college text book . Now you can compare prices for each textbook at your leisure, either in a different bookstore or through an online bookstore.

Try out new methods of studying. Besides your standard college text books, there are also ebook downloads of many titles plus audio and video books either on disc or in digital format. You’ll sometimes only need short texts from a particular book so why not just buy the chapters you need in digital form.

You can now also rent the textbooks you need for college. It works like Net Flix, rent what you want for as long as you want online. It’s a good cheap option, you can get as many books as you need but check to see when they should be returned. If you’re late returning them, you may get charged late fees. Ask on campus to see if there is already a textbook rental/loan service available.

Start a college text book co-op. Can you track down more students following your course? If so, you could create a band of brothers (and sisters) who share, buy and sell books with each other at fair prices.

Overlooking the library can be a costly mistake. The college library may well have the textbooks you are looking for. These should be free to use but they will be in high demand. Be careful of relying to heavily on the library just in case your textbooks are not available when you really need them

Older editions are always worth a look. New editions for older textbooks are commonplace but check the contents. The changes may be so minor that you really won’t need to pay top dollar for the newer version.

Do your legwork early, save $$$ on your textbooks for college which will leave you more money to spend on college social life.

Follow our lead and find out where to make these savings at our blog.