Textbooks cheaper.

CT Pixie, BSN, RN · Aug 19, 2012

My Amazon book purchase prices blew away B&N. Even paying shipping with Amazon I paid way less than had I gotten them through B&N. My Amazon book purchses of brand new books was significantly less than my school bookstores used book price.

I always look at the college bookstore price, then head over and check out B&N prices then over to Amazon. The only time I ever ended up buying from B&N was when there were no available books at Amazon.

CT Pixie, BSN, RN · Aug 19, 2012

You should really, really consider buying previous editions of your textbooks. At most, the chapters may be in a different order, but I haven't noticed any differences in the information. This semester is Psych, Pediatrics, and my three required textbooks were, before shipping, 49 cents total. LOL Also, I've gotten through fundamentals and med-surge with a 4.0 so clearly previous editions haven't held me back. Just food for thought!

Not always the case, my school had our book listed as edition 4, which we all purchased. The instructor had edition 5. He had assigned readings from HIS edition and gave the page numbers/chapters. Not only did the chapters not run the same nor the page numbers, but when we were finally able to get the right chapter/info to correspond to our edition, we also noticed that there were a significant amount of sections that were in the teachers 5th edition and not in our 4th at all. He had to redo all his tests/quizzes due to that fact, we did not have the information he would be testing on.

hgrimmett · Aug 19, 2012

If you sign up for B&N's mailing list or have their member discount card ($25/year) they frequently send 20% off (or more) coupons both by email and snail mail. Currently on the website they're having a "spend $25 or more, order ships free promo" too. Using those coupons and price comparing online has in several cases gotten me better book prices than Amazon's. Depends on the book and how many used ones are for sale though. I just checked one of my textbooks and if I used a 20% off coupon (I got 2 coupons in the mail last Friday) I'd save $12 by getting it from B&N compared to Amazon's current best price.

By the way, if you haven't already used it, Amazon does offer a free 6 month trial Amazon Prime membership for students. That gets you free two day shipping usually and a few other perks.

Daffodilly · Aug 21, 2012

We have the option of purchasing ebooks for our two main books our first quarter (starts Sept 24!). They can be used on ipads, and/or a regular PC/laptop, but not on a nook or kindle. They are always ours (our usage doesn't expire), and we can print portions if we want to. I decided to buy the ebooks since I purchased the same two main books at our school library as discards about a year and a half ago. They cost me less than $2 altogether. They are past copies, but I figured that they will be a good hard copy if needed since I will also have the ebooks.

The ones that I'm more concerned about are the "optional" books on our list. I am going to try to find those used...

abiklags · Aug 21, 2012

I just ordered my books. same edition as the book store, new or like new but I saved $80 dollars (30%) by buying them from amazon and half.com. renting would have cost me the same amount that I paid to buy them so if I can keep the books or rent them for the same amount, I'm going to buy them

SweetPEI · Aug 24, 2012

you would have been better off with amazon, you probably could have saved a couple more hundred. B&N isn't that great with savings.

I beg to differ. When I buy my texts, I compare prices with amazon barnes and noble, ebay, etc. This time, for me, barnes and noble was the cheapest... I am a member, and I got a huge discount and everything was shipped for free within 2 days. You just have to know when to secure a deal