Money: How to Save Money on UC Davis Textbooks
We’ve written a lot about Getting Deals on UC Davis Textbooks (this is a really comprehensive article, you should check it out. Recently we’ve also told you about TUN’s Textbook Search Engine That Compares Prices from Thousands of Sellers.
For UC Davis Students, The Simple Dollar offers their take on the topic How to Save Money on College Textbooks, which offers some good nuggets including:
Ask the Professor if Older Editions Are Acceptable
If a professor has a syllabus that lists a specific version of a textbook, send your professor a quick email (or, if you’re in class on the first day, raise your hand). Simply ask whether previous versions of the textbook are acceptable and, if so, which versions.
In many of my classes, previous versions of a textbook were perfectly acceptable, up to a certain point. Usually, each version of a book has a few changes, but over a number of editions, those changes accumulate and significantly alter the textbook.
Most professors are fine with the students using the previous version of the book or even an earlier version than that. You just need to make sure what versions actually work for the class.
Check the University and Community Libraries
Once you’re certain that you know what books are needed for the class, start checking the university and community libraries.
For a lot of classes, this won’t be helpful, but for some classes, such as literature classes or some history classes, the library may in fact have the book that you’re looking for.
If you can find books you need from the library, the book becomes free, at least for a while. A friend of mine was able to check out a book for his English Lit course from the community library and renewed it twice, meaning that he was able to keep it for the full time that he needed it for the course.
Use Occupy the Bookstore
So, you’ve finally realized that you do have to pay for some of your books. If that’s your situation, I highly recommend using Occupy the Bookstore, a free Google Chrome add-on that will make this whole process much, much easier.
Just add the extension to your browser at the link above, then head to the website of your university bookstore. Look up the books you need for your classes. As you visit the page for each specific book you need, the extension will pop up, giving you a long list of options for other places to buy the book – and that list is sorted by price by default.
What I usually suggest that people do is use Occupy the Bookstore, find the book they want, then browse the list for the first store that they trust (like, say, Amazon) and buy from there.