Places for students to find college textbooks, whether they want it immediately or are looking to save money

Austin Lewis Staff Writer

Winter quarter is coming, and now that most students have registered for their classes, its time to start looking into where to buy books. There are multiple places to get textbooks from and they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

The first option would be the College Bookstore located outside of the third floor of the CAS building. The bookstore has almost any book you could need as well as various school supplies and snacks.

The bookstore is a good choice for students who want to purchase their books and get them immediately, but the bookstore tends to be more costly than online shopping websites. The bookstore also features a buyback option, so after there is no more use for the textbook, students are able to sell it back to the store and get reimbursed some of the money you paid.

They also allow students to rent out textbooks for the quarter. This is a great option for people who know they will not need to keep the book after the class that it’s required for is over, and it allows them to save money while getting the book immediately.

For students looking to get the textbooks they need and save more money than you would at the bookstore, online shopping websites such as Ebay.com and Amazon.com are the best places to go.

Both of these sites offer college textbooks at huge discounts and have various shipping options, but it’s important to order the books in advance so that they come in the mail before the class starts.

They also allow users to make an account in order to sell used their textbooks to other students, and this becomes beneficial to both the seller and the buyer because the buyer receives a larger discount than purchasing it from a bookstore and the seller usually receives a larger reimbursement from selling it online because they don’t need to use the bookstore as the middleman.

However, it’s important to check if the textbook you need requires an online key to do assignments because most used textbooks don’t include these keys and they can only be obtained by purchasing new copies of the textbook.

The library, located on the fourth floor of the CAS building allows students to check books out for a limited about of time so that if they only need a piece of information from the book or cannot afford it they can use the library to stay with the class they are in’s requirements.

With winter quarter beginning on Jan. 6, there is a fair amount of time to figure out what each class requires and to decide how you want to get your books, whether it be a one-stop trip to the bookstore or ordering online in order to save some money.