New this year, amazon.com now offers free two-day shipping to students with a .edu e-mail address through their Amazon Student program. Seriously, it’s that easy. The membership lasts for a year, at which point Amazon may or may not decide to extend the offer, according to their Terms and Conditions. No need to worry about forgetting to cancel anything: If Amazon ends the free program, students won’t automatically be re-enrolled in a paid subscription.
I’ve used Amazon and other textbook sites such as half.com and abebooks.com since freshman year. I never had a problem with textbook quality and the prices were almost always better than those of local bookstores. They only downside was that I would sometimes have to wait weeks for my textbooks to arrive. With two day-shipping, purchasing your books online is easier and less stressful than making the trip to Norris or Beck’s (though you’ll have to deal with the morality of neglecting local businesses on your own).
As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing positive about textbooks. We all know all these pages are going to be online in 10 years. Textbooks are expensive, heavy and unwelcome reminders of all the readings I haven’t done. Amazon Student goes a long way toward making that burden a little easier to shoulder.
If you do end up buying your books online, here are some practices I’ve found helpful:
- Buy used. Often “used” textbooks look brand new. And even if the pages arrive striped in magenta and yellow, you might find the annotations helpful come cram time.
- Consider the seller ratings. Make sure your seller has a high customer satisfaction rate.
- Return the book if you’re not happy. If you can repackage the book so it looks like it did when it arrived and the seller gives you the go-ahead, just write “VOID” on the package — return shipping is free.
- Factor in shipping. Amazon Student makes delivery cost a non-issue, but I try to keep my carbon debt as low as possible by buying from retailers in the Midwest. If you’re a total eco-freak, consider the new Book Swap program.
- Sell your books back. There’s no reason not to, unless you truly believe you’ll revisit the book over and over again. Selling back books has saved me thousands of dollars over the years that otherwise would have sat untouched on a shelf at home.
- Search by ISBN number. You don’t want to accidentally get an earlier publishing or the teacher’s edition of a textbook. Or maybe you do.
Any tips or cheap sites I missed? Or do you have a compelling case for sticking with the mom-and-pop shop, despite thousands of dollars in looming debt? Sound off in the comments! Also, of all the websites most in need of a redesign, can we agree that Amazon is near the top of the list?