The Bookworm’s Guide to Not Going Broke on Books
I recently rediscovered my love for reading. College kills that for you sometimes, you know? Being forced to read and not having time to do so for pleasure kind of disillusions you a bit. But, I’ve been out of school for almost a year now, and because of that, I’ve been able to take a decent reading break. I got back into it about a month ago, and am reading through a lot of different books that I’ve either read before or owned for awhile and hadn’t gotten to read.
Why am I telling you about this on a personal finance blog? Well, because I used to go broke buying the books that I wanted. During college, I found the awesomeness that comes from using the internet as a tool in order to save money on my books. Yesterday, I talked a little bit about some basic ways you can save money using the Internet, and I remembered the lessons I learned on buying books in college. Those same lessons you can apply to anything, but I’ve found them to work best for books. Some of these tips will be toward college students buying their books for school, but most can be used in general.
College kids: Pester your professors for a book list. After I spent over $400 my first semester of college, I realized that there had to be a better way, and there was. The way that my university did scheduling allowed you to find out which professors you were going to have for your classes the next semester (unless it wasn’t known yet or they were an adjunct). I started to email those professors to ask them what books we were going to use the following semester, and my journey began.
Always compare. I’d look at several websites, the first being the publisher’s site to see if I could find the list price. My school’s bookstore rarely gave a discount from the list price, and if they did, it was very small. Then, I would start to look at sites like Amazon and Half.com. I didn’t mind getting used books as long as they were usable and they weren’t falling apart. One semester, because of comparing prices and following the next tip, I spent around $150 for books that I would have spent about $400 for.
I apply this principle to buying the books I use as resources or for pleasure reading now too. A used book doesn’t really matter to me, unless it’s in really rough shape. You can also find new books from some sellers for cheaper than the list price for various reasons as well. I just got a $17 book for $10 including shipping the other day.
See if you can borrow it (College kids: Sharing is caring). One semester, one of my good friends and I took two classes together. One of them was a literature class, so we had to buy the novels separately, but the main text for that class and the book for our statistics class we shared. We split the cost of the two, and at the end of the semester, we sold them back and split what we got. Those two books would have cost us about $55 each (after the buyback). Instead, we each spent about $20. A couple of my friends would also sell me their books if they had the same professor that I was going to have the following semester. Now, I always borrow books from my friends if they have them. Sometimes this results in me liking them so much that I buy them for myself, but at least I have a clue before I buy a book that I end up disliking or being indifferent about.
Never impulse buy. I go to the bookstore in my area and want to buy everything. And as you could guess, that’s bad for my wallet. I always check out sales though, and they have a reduced price rack that I cannot leave the store without checking. The other day, I got 3 books there for about $12 including tax because they were books that friends had suggested to me but I hadn’t bought yet. If I see a book at full price that I may be interested in, I make sure to go home to compare prices and read reviews before investing in it.
Books can be really pricey (some as high as $25 or $30), but if you are smart and take your time, you can really save a lot of money. I spend between $100 and $200 on books a year and I end up with dozens of new books to read and put in my library because I always try to follow these tips. You can too!
