Where to Get Cheap Textbooks For College
For many college students, "cheap textbooks" is a contradictory term. This is due to the fact that the college text book market is a "broken market," which has resulted in the cost of text books outpacing inflation.
The market is broken in the sense that the students (consumers) don’t decide what books (product) to use and the people who decide on the books to be use (university faculty), don’t purchase the product themselves. Consequently, competitive pricing is often removed from consideration when the marketing and selection of text books are being contemplated.
This market situation is worsened by these two facts. One, there is little competition in the textbook market due to the small number of publishers and wholesalers within the industry. This of course leads to higher book prices.
Pearson, Cengage Learning and McGraw-Hill are the three major publishers who control around 80% of the market. You can just imagine the huge influence they have on book prices.
On top of this, even if other would-be publishers wanted to enter the text book market and thus make it more price competitive, there is a huge obstacle.
The capital required to get into the industry is so extraordinarily high that these would-be publishers are unable to successfully break into the market. The lack of competition keeps book prices high.
Learning institution have largely been of little help to tackle the pricing of textbooks. As a matter of fact, evidence suggests that faculty staff are somewhat oblivious to cost of textbooks. A Connecticut Board of Governors for Higher Education study (2006) showed that just around 58% of that state’s faculty knew about the cost of the textbooks they chose for their programs.
When you consider also that faculties across America are evaluated only on the basis of their teaching, research and public service and that textbook selection plays no part, there is little optimism that prices are going to be trending down in the foreseeable future.
High book prices have a particularly adverse effect on students, especially those coming from low income families. It is not unusual for them to spend in excess of $1000 annually at college bookstores; that is over $4000 over a 4 year degree program.
Now that we know the causes and gravity of the problem - what are the current solutions? Here are the best ways to access cheap textbooks:
1. Book Buy Back Programs: This allows students to sell their used text books back to the college bookstore. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that a used textbook in good condition, that will be used in the following term, will fetch around 50% of the original price paid.
If the book won’t be used in the next term and is a current edition, a bookstore may still buy it back from a student for about 5-35% of the original price. Used college text books are resold to students for around 75% of the new book price.
2. Used Textbooks Online: eCampus, iChapters and Phat Campus are highly reputable booksellers that offer a huge selection of discounted textbooks online. You also have the option to sell your used textbooks for reasonable prices.
3. Text Book Rental Programs: Nicole Allen of The Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) claims that renting text books is the most effective method of reducing cost price in the short term.
Data uncovered by the PIRG show that textbook rental services make it possible for students to pay only $130 to $240 annually for their text books over a 4 year degree period. Compare this to the average of $800 to $900 yearly in text book purchases traditional college bookstore make from each student.
However, the high capital and inventory costs required to get into the book rental business have been a huge drawback to bookstores getting involved in this program. Nonetheless, there are highly reputable online text book rental services out there.
4. Textbook Exchanges: This is another response to escalating text book costs that has significantly grown in popularity in recent years. These web communities offer places for students, alumni and instructors to buy and sell cheap textbooks as well as network.
Two of the most popular exchanges are GPA Book and I Have That Book
5. The latest trend in drive towards making cheap textbooks widely available is the "Open Source" or "Open Textbook" facility. These books are offered online for free by their author(s), that is, students can read, download and print them at no cost.
Some of these books are already being used in universities across the USA, even in prestigious schools like Caltech and Harvard.
Some great resources of open source textbooks are, Textbook Revolution, Flat World Knowledge, Make Textbooks Affordable, and The Open Textbook Project
Now that you know that you don’t have to accept inflated textbook prices, explore the resources mentioned on this page to access the cheapest textbooks on offer and save a bundle.
