With colleges and universities getting back in session throughout the entire month of January and students scouring the Internet and campus bookstores searching for the best deals on textbooks, we thought we’d take a moment to give you some tips on saving even more money.
Sure, when you use the CampusBooks.com price-comparison tool via website or smartphone, you see an array of the absolute lowest prices on the textbooks you need. But the initial search is just the first step in your savings. Here are some additional ways to compound the textbook savings:
1) Use Coupons: When you conduct your search, you may see something like “Coupon: 10% Off Order — Use Code Save10” in the search results. If you see that a coupon is available, click “See Details” in the listing and copy the code for when you check out on the merchant’s page. A word about textbook coupons: we don’t skimp here and many coupons are exclusive to CampusBooks.com. This month we’ve got coupons from:
- Alibris
- Biblio
- CampusBookRentals
- CengageBrain
- Chegg
- College Book Renter
- CourseSmart
- eCampus
- Half.com
- PhatCampus
- TextbookStop
- Many more!
2) Add multiple books (up to 10) to a single order in your Bookbag and let us find you the best bundled deal. We’ll bring back results showing multi-book discounts and cheaper shipping when you use a single merchant for more than one of the items. To add to a Bookbag and bundle for savings, conduct your search, click the “Compare Prices Now” button, and instead of clicking any of the “Buy Now” button, instead click “+ Bookbag.” We’ll do the rest to maximize your textbook savings.
3) Be open to both buying textbooks and renting textbooks and mixing and matching. Sometimes it makes sense to buy your textbooks, like when you know that you’ll keep them or you need to write in them or they come with some sort of access code or proprietary supplements or you know that the book will have a high buyback value. If these things are not the case, consider renting if the price is substantially lower than purchase price.
4) Consider eBooks and international editions. Maybe you’ve never tried these formats, but they can save you big money. Now is an especially good time for eBooks as there is an abundance of free reader software for computers and smartphones.
5) Because free is the ultimate in savings, use our Local Search to check nearby libraries to see if they have your books available for loan.
