As the school year approaches, students are faced with a complicated (and costly) question: Should they buy their textbooks, or should they rent them? The College Board estimates that the average student will spend well over $1,000 on textbooks this year, and that number is on the rise since the year 2000.
Of course, students now have much better textbook shopping options than they did in the past. Before the rise of the Internet, students were essentially forced to use their school’s university bookstore. They had little power to turn elsewhere, and they could be gouged for higher prices because they needed the store’s books. The Internet, along with its third-party textbook vendors, sites for resale, and other technologies, changed that.
Despite rising textbook costs, students have more power to keep their expenses down than ever before. There are a few factors that students should consider when deciding upon their textbook strategy, and their choices could add up to hundreds of dollars over the course of a four-year degree. Here are some important questions to consider:
Will I resell my book after I’m done using it? Although book purchases often have larger upfront costs than book rentals, students can recoup some of that cost by selling the textbook to another student for the next term. Of course, this strategy can carry some risks. For one, you might be too busy with finals or other things at the end of the school year to sell your own textbook. In this case, you might be able to find a friend or someone else to sell it on Amazon for you in exchange for a cut of the sale, and that would be preferable to just throwing the book away. Still, you likely won’t recoup much money if you aren’t motivated to sell the book yourself.
Another risk is that the publisher will come out with a new edition before the next term and leave you with an essentially worthless textbook. I’ve rarely seen students angrier than those who are told by the school bookstore that their textbook is no longer valuable, and their frustration is understandable. Buying a textbook with the intention to sell it later is a big investment. If you plan on going this route, make sure to check the publisher’s website first to ensure that no new edition is coming out soon. You can also try emailing the author directly if you track down their email address.
Another factor to consider is that textbook value varies widely at different points in the school year. When you purchase your book, you will likely be paying top dollar because there is a lot of demand for the product: Everybody is scrambling to acquire one, so the sellers can charge higher prices. When you are at the end of the year and looking to sell your book, however, the dynamic works in reverse. Almost nobody is looking to purchase a textbook for September in June, but almost everyone who bought one is looking to get rid of it. You can make a lot more money by holding your books over the summer until demand for them returns, but that can also be inconvenient: you have to bring them home with you; you have to store them; you have to return with them. Consider whether the extra cash is worth the hassle to you and how you can keep your textbooks until their value returns.
If you don’t mind reading through someone else’s notes—sometimes they’re helpful—or if you plan on adding your own anyway, buying used can be a great way to keep the investment costs low. You have a much greater chance of recouping your purchase price by reselling a textbook that you bought used, rather than new.
Of course, there are other options to keep your purchase cost low besides just purchasing used books. E-textbooks, available through textbook sites like Amazon, are a lower-cost alternative to physical textbooks because they avoid the large costs of paper, ink, and physical distribution. Instead, you can download them directly, just as you would any e-book, and have the book stored for reading on your virtual device.
The advantages of e-textbooks: no more hauling around heavy textbooks; no more damage or replacement fees to the university bookstore; lower costs to purchase. The disadvantages: it can be hard to take notes in them, although publishers are improving software that allows for virtual notes; reading a virtual book can be less engaging than holding a physical book in your hands; not all courses have their textbooks available in e-book form.
Although e-textbook technology is not perfect, cost-conscious students should look into their options to determine what purchase makes the most sense for them. Buying used or virtual books is not for everyone, but for those willing to take the plunge, it can save quite a bit of money over buying every book brand new.
Before heading to the university bookstore, make sure to do research on Amazon or another textbook vendor about how much your books cost online. Consider whether there is an e-book edition or an older edition that might suffice. For example, my Intro to Econ course had an old textbook available that was virtually identical, except in the homework problems at the book. Our libraries had copies of the newer edition, though, so students could have saved a bunch of money by buying the old edition for cheap and just doing their homework at the library.
If you have friends who have taken a certain class before, you might ask them where they purchased their copy. If you know that you’ll be taking a certain class the next term—say, know in June that you’ll be taking it in September—it might make sense to buy in advance and take advantage of the lower price. Of course, this brings the same convenience difficulties as storing your textbooks for resale after the summer does, but depending on your situation the saved cash might be worth it.
There is no hard-and-fast rule for when to purchase a textbook, as opposed to renting one. Each option can differ in cost, convenience, and difficulty, and it is up to you to choose which path best fits your circumstances. Still, by taking advantage of the Internet and new technologies, you can put yourself in a much better position than someone who enters the textbook world blindly. That advantage will likely save you hundreds of dollars over the course of your education.
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"Another factor to consider is that textbook value varies widely at different points in the school year. When you purchase your book, you will likely be paying top dollar because there is a lot of demand for the product: Everybody is scrambling to acquire one, so the sellers can charge higher prices. When you are at the end of the year and looking to sell your book, however, the dynamic works in reverse. Almost nobody is looking to purchase a textbook for September in June, but almost everyone who bought one is looking to get rid of it. You can make a lot more money by holding your books over the summer until demand for them returns, but that can also be inconvenient: you have to bring them home with you; you have to store them; you have to return with them."
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to do an empirical study on this. Ignoring the costs of storing a book over the summer, this wouldn't happen in a market with perfect information and rational actors, because these are predictable demand increases. But how rational are college students?
I think a complication with that analysis is that the market for textbooks probably isn't perfectly competitive. Even with the Internet, the local university bookstore still holds a lot of market power, and they can really use their position (convenience; getting rid of them all at once) to get better prices for themselves. Because of that, the question isn't even so much whether college students can anticipate other students' demands, but whether they can navigate the market, even knowing that information, to still get a good price.
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