A lot of schools offer textbooks from their on-campus bookstores as well as an online version of the store. It is usually the school’s recommended method for buying your textbooks. However, students are not limited to just their school's method of selling you their textbooks. There are a lot of other options out there that are available to students. Some of these are Cregg, Amazon, eBay, and Textbooks.com. In a lot of cases, these other textbook sources are a bit cheaper than your schools offered options. I personally have found textbooks for $15 to $75 cheaper than what my school sells them for using some of these outside sources. Even if you only find your books for $10 cheaper , those $10 add up quite quickly. Another reason I like to buy my textbooks from other sources is because as an accounting major a lot of my books are sold on campus in the form of loose leaf books and I can't handle that. I either lose the pages or tear them or something else happens to them. It's really difficult to use them but it's the only way my school offers these books. I have been able to find the same book being sold as a normal textbook, by normal I mean that it is part of bound books with a cover and spine that I do not have to put in. A binder to use, on both Cregg and Amazon. A great thing about buying from Amazon is that, if you are an Amazon Prime Member then some of the textbooks will offer Prime two day shipping which is really convenient.
Another option would be renting your books or buying eBooks from either your school, their website, or from one of the aforementioned outside sources. If you are okay with using an ebook instead of a physical book then eBooks can save you a ton of money. Also, if you know you can take care if the book, then renting can also save you a ton of money on textbooks especially from sources like Chegg.
There can be some downsides to buying from other sources too, though. For example, some schools offer a way to pay for textbooks with excess financial aid, in the form of what my school calls a book voucher. In my case, the book voucher can only be used in the on-campus bookstore or on the TextbookX website, which is the online version that Davenport uses. So if you are relying on those then you wouldn't be able to order the book from another source. Another issue could be shipping. If the source doesn't offer free shipping, or the shipping could take a really long time and would be expensive it may not be worth saving a few dollars. Just something to keep in mind when purchasing from another source.
So next time you are buying textbooks be sure to do a little shopping around if you can.
