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Saving Money on College Textbook Costs-Tips and Tricks

This guide provides students with ideas and resources that may be helpful with cutting costs when it comes to classroom textbooks.

Ways to Save Money on Textbooks

One thing we hear over and over from students is how expensive textbooks are. In this guide we offer some tips and resources to try to find a free copy of your textbooks, but we strongly recommend you advocate with your peers and your professors for the use of Open Educational Resources (OER).

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials. ~ Unesco

While advocating for OER may not be specifically useful to you immediately, students often take more that one class from a specific professor. Advocating to change the textbook landscape in your freshman or sophomore year away from pricey textbooks to OER might not only help in your junior and senior year, but it will help future students. 

Tips For Finding Textbooks

Time spent searching before purchasing just might save some $$$, so before you buy your textbook, try these tips. (Note: this is not a sustainable way for everyone in your class to get their textbooks, which is why we are advocating for OER.) 

  • Start out with the A.C. Clark Library's catalog, OneSearch. We may already have a copy in our general collection or on Course Reserve or there may be free online access to a title you need through our subscriptions platforms such as ProQuest, JSTOR, and Project Muse. 

  • There are also useful digital books available in free databases like Project Gutenberg. 

  • If the book is not available through the library, we can try to borrow it from another library. Search for the title in WorldCat a catalog that contains holdings for most of the libraries of the world. If you find your book, click on the BSU LINKS TO FULL TEXT link. It will bring you to our A.C. Clark Library catalog where you can log in and request the book. You can find more information about Interlibrary Loan here. 
  • Ask your professor if an older edition of a textbook is acceptable. Often textbooks are updated with minor changes and the older/cheaper editions have enough of the similar information that they are still useful.