By Ball State Daily Advertising
It’s not new information that college can be expensive. Part of what makes college expensive is the textbooks. Textbooks can range from $10 to over $100! But no matter how expensive your textbooks are, there are ways to save money.
When it comes to textbooks, one of the most important things to do is to wait to buy textbooks until after the first week of classes. Professors may have a PDF for you or say that you don’t need the textbook. Just because it’s in the syllabus doesn’t always mean you’ll need it.
Professors may also allow older editions; old editions of textbooks are often cheaper.
If you don’t know what textbooks you need you can find out by checking the Ball State University Official Bookstore website. Through this website, you can input your class information and it will form a list of the books you need. The bookstore also offers price matching. For example, if Amazon offers the text book for cheaper than the bookstore, you can show a bookstore employee and you will pay the price from Amazon.
If you do need to buy textbooks, the most common way to save money on textbooks is by renting them. The Ball State Bookstore located in the Arts and Journalism Building offers renting for both physical and digital, but some publishers offer digital renting for less than the bookstore.
Buying used books can also be the way to go. Websites like Chegg, Half Price Books, ThriftBooks and CampusBooks are great websites forbbuying used books. If you would like a PDF of your textbooks, you can also look up your books on websites like Z-library and Academia.com. These websites offer
free PDFs of textbooks; however, this is not always reliable.
When looking at textbooks it can be helpful to save money by doing research and looking
for the best deal. Good luck!
