For some students, textbooks are rarely more than expensive, heavy, seasonal shelf decorations. But there have been some changes to the traditional method of buying and selling textbooks that offer students more affordable options.

BUYING FROM HOME AND CAMPUS

Students have found innovative ways of purchasing cheap textbooks by checking out online resources first.

Senior Rosemary Fontanella, a psychology major, uses Web sites like half.com and Amazon.com as her first stop when shopping for books.

“I usually check to see if I can get the textbook used for a cheaper price, which is why I really appreciate it when teachers don’t request the newest version of a text,” she said. “If I can’t get a book at a good price, or if I need it really fast or something, I’ll go to Mando Books.”

Fontanella said that in most cases she avoids the bookstore, because although it’s convenient, the prices aren’t worth it. When she’s done with the book, Fontanella usually goes back to half.com to resell the books at the price she paid.

“In the past, I’ve been able to sell back a good portion of my books, actually,” she said. “It’s all just sitting down and taking the time to put the books up online and then packing and shipping them when they get ordered by other students that’s a bit of a hassle.”

Even though the process may be time consuming, Fontanella said it’s worth keeping the cycle of buying and selling textbooks at low costs going. Other students participate in that same cycle by exhausting local options first.

“I usually walk around the academic buildings and I see if there are signs advertising the books I need,” said Kevin Eng, a freshman majoring in accounting. “It’s much cheaper than the bookstore.”

Facebook is another accessible resource for students. One group, BU Textbook Buying/Selling Central, boasts more than 1,600 members.

BOOKS FOR RENT

Barnes & Noble College Booksellers has introduced a textbook-renting program in 28 of its 636 college bookstores — including SUNY Brockport and Buffalo State College — according to the company’s Vice President of Books Jade Roth.

“We piloted the program in the fall semester with three schools and then this winter we rolled out 25 more schools in order to get feedback and comments from the students,” Roth said. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We’re seeing that students really value the up-front savings.”

This program is not yet available at Binghamton University, Roth said. She noted, however, that the program is expanding.

Roth said that students save more than 50 percent on the cover price of a new book when they rent them through this program. Students keep the books through finals week and then return them through their campus bookstore. Each student needs to sign an agreement when they use the rental program that clearly states the condition in which the book must be returned.

At colleges and universities where this program is available, students can purchase their rental textbooks through their bookstore Web site, as well as in person. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers offers new and used books, as well as some digital books.

“We want to offer as many format and price-point options as possible,” Roth explained.

For BU students, similar options are still available.

“There’s a Web site called Chegg.com and you can rent your textbooks,” said Marisa Silvers, a freshman nursing major. “The prices are great. My friend got four textbooks for $90 when one of the new textbooks would have cost $150.”

DOWNLOAD A TEXTBOOK

A relatively new alternative to buying textbooks is downloading digital ones. A number of Web sites offer e-books, which are specifically written to be available only online. They are popular in Europe and California, according to a press release from www.bookboon.com, a Danish company that offers downloads of academic textbooks for free.

“BookBooN, rather than taking money from students, covers its costs through having a few [advertisements] placed within the books, predominantly recruitment ads, which never exceed more than 15 percent of total book content,” explained BookBooN representative Edward Blake. “You never pay to read or download our textbooks; in fact it is impossible to even make any sort of payment on our site.”

As for the reputation of the academic texts available, according to Blake, all of their textbooks are written by leading university professors in their field, often located in both the U.K. and the U.S.

“One of our authors, Larry M. Walther for instance, is the head of accountancy at Utah State University and has also published many ‘traditional’ accounting textbooks in the past,” he said.

BookBooN has over 150 textbooks in English that cover a variety of subjects. There is an even wider selection available in Dutch, Swedish and Danish languages.