Useful websites for buying, renting or selling university textbooks

It’s 2019, but hard copies of university textbooks are still – largely – part and parcel of university life. 

Despite their importance, students often have a love-hate relationship with their textbooks – they’re expensive, bulky, and in some instances, are only used once before they lay forgotten among a pile of other books in your room, collecting dust.

While there are moves for textbooks to go digital (not too long ago, publisher Pearson announced that it will be phasing out print books), most students will likely have to make do with buying or renting textbooks until publishers decide to go fully digital.

So what are some useful websites students could trawl through if they were looking to buy, rent or sell their textbooks? Here are some worth checking out:

• BigWords.com

  Its website notes that BigWords compares textbook prices from online stores, in addition to calculating the shipping and promotions available for each item, enabling customers to select the cheapest combinations that suits their budget.

BigWords claims that users can find textbooks that are some 35 to 45 percent cheaper than other online stores, and up to 90 percent cheaper than list prices.

They also allow users to consider “buyback pricing” when purchasing, so students can tell if they’re better off renting their textbooks, or buying and then selling them at a later date.

• Slugbooks.com

SlugBooks also enables students to compile textbook prices from trustworthy online new, used, rental and digital textbook sellers, including Amazon and Chegg, notes its website. This allows students to choose the cheapest one available. Students also have the option of searching by ISBN.

Take note of these useful websites! Source: Pexels

• BookFinder4u

Are you looking to find the lowest price on the internet for a used book? BookFinder4u might prove useful. It may not be the coolest website around, but it serves its purpose of looking up the best prices of new, used books, textbooks and book rentals at 130 bookstores worldwide.

What’s unique about this website is that it also has an “out-of-print book search system” to help students find, as its name suggests, rare and out-of-print books. Students can buy or rent textbooks here.

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