Textbooks are too expensive & the industry is a bit of a moneymaking scam. Here’s some sites, masterposts, and tips for free & cheap textbooks that might be able to help you out!
Cheap Books (Renting & Buying)
Big Words: compares lots of book prices!
Slug Books: buy, rent, and sell
Alibris: lots of cheap books & will send you coupons
Abe Books: fantastic website for searching tonnes of books
Biblio: has a lot of rare books
Thriftbooks: great for books other than textbooks, too
AddAll: the best search engine for books
GetTextbooks: sell and search for books
Chegg: very competitively priced
RentText: nice if you don’t want to buy!
Amazon: a tried and true classic
Textbook Rush: does buying, renting, selling, and ebooks
Campus Book Rentals: also has buyback which is niceee
Ebook Search Engine: google searches just for ebooks
TextbookNova: good but uses torrents
LibraryGenesis: great and a guide on using it
Project Gutenberg: a true classic!! great for classic books
FreeBookSpot: also has categories
Questia: mainly for classics online
Google Books: if you only need a quote
BookBoon: mainly for stem books
Ebook Lobby: categorised & more than textbooks
BookSee: nice layout & easy to navigate
Tips & Links for Textbooks
How to Find Textbooks Online for Free
Tracker with PDFs/E-Books of College Textbooks
How To Search & More Links
Alternatives to Buying Expensive Textbooks
Free, Specific, Renting Textbooks etc.
A Basic Guide to College Textbooks
Leak College Textbooks, Not Nudes
Sites Where You Can Get Free Textbooks
Consider buying a past edition of the book. If it’s a textbook, and not a workbook with required questions, you can often get the same information for just a fraction of the current edition’s price.
Try sharing with a friend (or more than one)! You can either take turns using the book, or scan the relevant pages and share them on google drive so you can all use the book for a much cheaper price.
Buy off another student. They’ll already have taken the class (so they might also have some tips!) and will usually give you a cheaper price.
Go to class first before buying the book. You might not need the same edition, it might just be a recommended reading and not required, or, if you’re super lucky, the instructor might send out PDFs of relevant chapters.
Make use of your school’s library. Get there first after class and borrow the relevant book, or scan/photocopy the reading so you can do it in your own time without having to pay for the book.
If you’re downloading from online, make sure your antivirus software is on. You don’t want to accidentally download a virus when all you wanted was a PDF (my antivirus has blocked textbook downloads before).
Check shipping prices. A lot of comparison sites don’t include shipping in their listings, so make sure you check before buying something where the shipping is more than three times the cost of the book (or worse)!
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