Save Money on Books for your Degree Course
December 19th, 2006 by get a first class degree
Use the university library, and get into the habit of renewing books ever week to avoid fines!
Find out if your university has a scheme for students to re-sell old books. If so use this to buy books and sell them on when finished.
Amazon often sell used books via third parties, these are often ridiculously cheap when compared to the Amazon price for a new book. Used books on Amazon are usually properly described in terms of condition, and sellers are usually very professional.
Books are often sold cheaply on Ebay but beware:
- Sellers are often deceitful and unprofessional compared to Amazon sellers
- Read the small print, make sure you are not bidding on a pirate E-Book
- Check sellers feedback carefully, even ‘positive’ (green) feedback may contain complaints
Another common problem is people masquerading as domestic sellers actually being based in other countries resulting in shipping delays (Books written in English are widely available abroad for a fraction of the UK/US price).
There are many specialist online bookstores which cater for students, so its always worth having a Google for what you need.
I spent my few year at university renting the course books from the library and renewing them every week. In hindsight, this was a bad move, as it meant I had extra things to remember about book deadlines and had to take time out of the day to go to the library to renew them. At times of stress/work, I often forgot to renew them on time and incurred large fines. I could have paid for the books outright by the time i paid all my fines.
This year i decided to take a different approacch and actually buy the course books off Amazon. Using the Amazon marketplace saved me LOADS of money. I bought one book for £1 that costs £119.99 new. The books are all in good condition and you can write your notes in them and refer to them over the holidays when you cant otherwise get to the library.
Hi Sam,
Thanks for your comment.
I started buying used books off both Amazon and Ebay, you save an absolute fortune. As you say comparing the cost of new books and used books on Amazon… there is a big difference. I would never pay for a new book if it was available used (unless it was a present for someone else
)
Regarding library loans, we were able to reserve and renew books online, so there were no wasted journey’s, this was a massive benefit.
Jez