Saving on Textbooks - Online Editions

On the top of your game in WOW, you decide to take a break to stretch your legs, get your books for class, and possibly score a free red bull from one of those cute chicks that goes around campus handing them off. Out of the dorms, you make your way to the bookstore with a new longboard you got before you moved in. It takes a couple minutes of dodging your slow, unobservant, fellow schoolers but you get to the bookstore, with no red bull. Bummed, you head inside and start looking for your programming class textbook when you see that there isn't one. Instead, you find a slip to bring to the register that looks way underpriced to be a real textbook. But it is, a brand new, never been touched online edition. You are happy with the idea of digitized textbook, thinking about how easy it would be to toggle between classwork and a raid in the realm of Bleeding Hollow*.

This was actually how a buddy found out about online textbooks and I visited him in his dorm room one afternoon and that was what he was doing... toggling. But it was great for him because he a had  nice sized screen and he invested in touch screen technology which made the entire experience more interactively life-like. It had everything that a normal textbook had and even the capabilities of highlighting, adding notes, and even printing out certain pages. They also support mobile platforms so you can access it anywhere if you forget to bring your laptop along with you.

So you are sold on the idea of not having to lug around a 15 lb book around to lectures but you don't know how to get your hands on them. Go to the bookstore? With the added convenience of being on campus, not only can you do better than that through saving money but by not even changing out of those embarrassing pajamas from home and leaving your room. That's right. Online**.

While there are a great many locations to get these online editions, I would have to recommend coursesmart.com or the publisher website catalogs. Coursesmart.com has the added benefit of only specializing in online textbook editions so it may be easier to find all that you are looking for in one place. While you are still dealing with a middleman, because they are so popular and everything is run online, they can make a good amount of profit without having to seriously over-charge like the other guys***. But if you have the time to search for all of the online copies, go to the main publisher website and they should have a catalog for individual student buyers. They will show you the textbook and the type of ways you can acquire your book, either through a cloth (hardback), loose leaf, or online. Online is always the cheapest route and from the publisher, you have eliminated the middleman. 

Congrats! You can now afford a Starbucks treat once a week for the rest of the year with all the money you have saved by now. Think of me when you biting into that pumpkin loaf**** slice of heaven.

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*A real place, I assure you. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/status

**coursesmart.com, chegg.com, publisher websites

***We both know I am talking about bookstores. What can I say, almost as bad as Walmart except Walmart is cheap and bookstores aren't.

****Don't hate the pumpkin flavors, it just happens to send me into bliss with every bite.