When buying books, it pays to shop around

For many college students, freshman year comes with a host of important realizations. Perhaps… For many college students, freshman year comes with a host of important realizations. Perhaps the most universal and undeniable of these shared experiences comes from purchasing and selling back textbooks. Allow me to give a brief summation: It sucks.

According to an article in The New Yorker, the five largest textbook retailers control 80 percent of new college textbook sales in North America. And in the past 22 years, the average textbook price has risen 6 percent annually – twice as much as the average rate of inflation.

So what does this mean for your college experience? It means it’s not uncommon to spend upward of $500 in less than an hour in one of the campus-owned bookstores. It also means you’ll see only a tiny fraction of what you paid for the same books when selling them back at the end of the semester. Most students reluctantly wipe out part of their checking accounts believing they have no alternatives.

If you’re willing to do a little legwork and some searching, you might be able to redirect all that textbook money you were putting aside and have a little fun with it.

For starters, find out what textbooks you’ll need for your classes. Now, I’m not talking about getting a list of all the books your professors have listed associated with the class. As you’ll find out, only half of them you’ll actually need, and some of them you’ll never use in the class at all. Don’t buy them.

Go to class for two weeks, see how the system works, and then determine what you can and can’t get away with buying. If you’re worried about falling behind right away, don’t be. If you’ve been attending your class, picking up the textbook a week or so late won’t leave you behind for the rest of the semester.

For the textbooks you do need to buy, I would heartily recommend anything that is not a campus bookstore. A report by Business Week stresses the monopolistic policies that these stores can get away with. Common profit margins at these places run around 40 percent for used textbooks, generating $11 billion in annual revenue. If you’re looking to save some money, just cut out the middlemen.

Web sites like Amazon.com provide a large selection of obscure textbooks, often for sale by other students who have already had a class using the same book you’re seeking. Take advantage of this – there is no markup, and ideally all the money involved in these transactions will stay between fellow students. If Amazon doesn’t have what you need, try looking around online for some other options, such as Chegg.com. Chegg was started by a student at Iowa State University in 2001 and has been merging with like-minded Web sites and businesses to cut into the market of overpriced texts and save you real money – so let them.

If, however, you’re truly strapped for cash, there’s one little-known alternative that just might allow you to eat for part of the semester, too – the library systems. This has a few cons associated with it and can be a bit chancy, but if it works out, you can get what you need for straight As without dropping a dime on books all semester.

Assuming you’re close to campus, there are two main library systems at your disposal: the Hillman Library and the Carnegie Public Library. Signing up at Carnegie is easy: just bring a photo ID and something with an Allegheny County address on it, and you’ve got your library card. Now you’ll have access to everything in the Carnegie system, which covers about 25 separate libraries within the area.

For a course textbook, your best bet is the Hillman Library. In addition to the main library, there are about a dozen other libraries on campus that are subject-specific. Frick Fine Arts has a library containing books about the fine arts. Eberly Hall has one that is specific to chemistry. From the library’s Web site you can do a search for the books you need. A few minutes for a search and a small trek up the Upper Campus hill could save you from the need to purchase a $100 book.

If that doesn’t work, give Hillman Library’s E-Z Borrow system a try. It will actually search through other college libraries’ systems from all over the state to find what you need. Truth be told, it’s one of the best-kept secrets on campus for saving some serious cash. Just check out PittCat – the library’s search page – and you’ll see a link for the Palci/E-Z Borrow search.

It might take a little bit of extra work in the beginning of the semester, but saving hundreds of dollars for an hour or two of library or Internet searching is something nobody can afford to pass up.

E-mail Brandon at bkp3@pitt.edu.