I have been a victim of high text book prices once. The cost of textbooks is skyrocketing these days and one has to incorporate this cost when planning college finances. I have spent pretty lot of money on my text books in my first semester but as I learned the tips to save money on text books, I managed to save a fortune from my second semester. It is a fact that they can't be cheap as they cost a lot to produce. So the perfect solution to save money on textbooks is opting for free text books available online.
Online Libraries
Before buying a book, take a look to find the book in virtual libraries. There are hundreds of trustworthy online libraries where you may find the material you needed or sometimes you get more than what you wanted. Many of these libraries offer reference materials and literature to the reader without any cost. They also allow readers to download them and read at a leisure time.
Some of the very popular online libraries are:
Bartleby is one of the most popular virtual library. If offers thousands of free books, articles, literature, and academic research papers. They don't cost user any money and people can read any number of books at free of cost. They can also download the books and can read later on desktop or a hand held device.
As you can make out from the name, it serves as a public library but it is virtual. In collaboration with some institutions, Internet public library provides thousands of books and research papers for readers. They have vast fields of books and articles. They are also free to read but they don't allow readers to download the books.
It is a great option to find articles about any subject you want. It is fast growing online library for articles. You just give the topic name and you get all the articles about the topic. They offer lakhs of academic articles and ebooks.
This is also an online library very similar to Internet Public Library. Though they have limited books and articles, they have books about every topic and every subject.
Some other online libraries are Connexions, Global Text Project, Textbook Revolution, and Freeload Press.
Book Swapping
Other very good option to get the book you want at free of cost is to go for book swapping. It is a very trend in colleges these days. You can swap the books you already have with the book you want from someone. You just have to register yourself on a website for book swapping and if you give the name of the book you have and the name of the book you want, you , may find other student who has the book you want and who want your book. This is a great option for getting books at virtually no cost. Some sites offering this service are Bookswap, Monster Trade, and Trade Key.
Buying Books at Cheap Prices
If you can not find free books anywhere, you can go for text books available at very low costs. There are many sites where you can buy used text books at very low prices. You can sell the books at the same site once you are done with the book. You get almost the same amount you have spent on buying it.
There are other sites where you can buy new books at lower prices at discount prices. They offer discounts for promotional purpose and you can take advantage of this. These prices are very less when compared to the prices at the regular book stores where you buy your text books.
Any of the above methods helps in saving the money you have to spend on buying the books.
