By: Ted Menadier

The summer is coming to a close and for students it is time to go back to school. The HouseFront Blog will focus on back to school themes this week for both parents and students of all ages.

For college students a return to school means buying textbooks. The college bookstores can leave students and parents feeling raked over the coals with some textbooks costing hundreds of dollars apiece for even used books.

Buying textbooks online is not a new idea, and almost any textbook can be found at a number of online retailers such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. However, there are two great resources, one new, and one lesser known that we will be focusing on. AbeBooks.com has been around for some time and gives you access to 13,500 used and new booksellers worldwide. Facebook on the other hand is a social networking site that was initially started for college students and has now expanded allowing everyone to join. Facebook has just recently introduced a new service called “Market Place Book Exchange” which links buyers and sellers of used textbooks, circumventing any middlemen.

The textbook Energy: Its Use and the Environment (The Book) will be used as an example of how these alternative textbook resources can be used to save parents and students money. As a reference point the new price for The Book on both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com was $124.95 new. Used copies could be purchased on Amazon for as little as $67.22 used.

The ISBN of a book is used for searching textbooks on both AbeBooks.com and Facebook . The search results for The Book on AbeBooks.com returned a low price of $32.38 for what was claimed to be a new copy. A search on Facebook for The Book produced no immediate results, but within several hours two individuals responded who were interested in selling their copy of The Book one for $45 and the other for $25.

Most importantly parents and students should know that there are other resources for new and used textbooks besides their college bookstores. Both Facebook and AbeBooks.com were much cheaper options for purchasing The Book than a conventional school bookstore. Of the two AbeBooks.com allows you to purchase from an established source, Facebook most of the time requires a face-to-face transaction and a Facebook account.

What resources do you use?

Facebook

AbeBooks.com

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble.com

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