When a semester of textbooks can add up to a couple (or three or four) hundred dollars, hitting the checkout line at the campus bookstore is a distressing experience for many students, to say the least. TechCrunch has some solutions.
Analog solutions to this problem include: borrowing from the library, borrowing from friends who’ve already taken the class, and photocopying from those foolish enough to buy the book in exchange for beer.
Or, you know, you could turn to the plethora of digital resources out there for help.
If you really don’t want to spend money on books, Boundless is a free service that aligns its e-textbooks with other popular texts by chapter across 20 subjects. In classes like Accounting and Psych 101 where many textbooks provide the same information, this can be a big money saver. Boundless is also launching a premium option, which includes study help in the form of active recall quizzes at the price of $19.99 per book.
Textbook giant Chegg, gives students a lot of options. You can buy new or used, rent a hard copy, or rent an e-text from 60 days up to a year. There’s a certain advantage to that last option, which is that you’re never going to forget to turn your rental back in and get charged the full amount. Just saying. You can also sell textbooks through the site.
Just in time for this school year, Google has also gotten in on the textbook game with e-text rentals available in the Google Play store.
Cheap Textbook Rentals 