Buying Books on a Budget
Books on a shelf, no doubt bought on a budget 
Image Copyright Johanna.B
Books are a great way to entertain yourself, expand your education, and even add to a hobby or collection. Unfortunately, books can be expensive. Whether you need to purchase books for school or for pleasure, you will want to try to find ways to save money. Fortunately, today’s world of technology allows many great ways to purchase books even if you are on a budget. The following are some of the most budget-friendly ways to purchase any type of book:
- Book Swapping: There are many great book swapping websites available, one of the best being paperbackswap.com. Here, you can rotate books from your own collection for new books that you need. You do get to keep the books you obtain until you decide to relist them. Once another member receives one of your books, you earn credits to receive another new book from another member.
- Discounted Internet Sale: This includes places like Amazon.com, Half.com, alibris.com, or chapters.com. At these sites, you can find great new books at a discounted price. You can also purchase books that are used for an even cheaper price. At Amazon, you can find books for less than one dollar! If you are looking for cheap textbooks, try half.com where you can find an entire database of books in just one place. Like Amazon, Alibris has many used books and also offers discounts for return business. Overall, these sites are some of the best ways to get discounted books of any kind! When purchasing books from any of these sites, be sure to Google a discount code. These codes can often times be found easily and can save you a great deal of money at checkout.
- E-bay: Although it isn’t simply a book seller, e-bay offers many items at a fraction of the cost. You won’t be guaranteed that what you want is available, but it is worth a shot and you could end up saving a great deal of money with listings as low as 99 cents.
Compare books with Addall.com. While this site won’t allow you to purchase books directly, it is a great resource for comparing the costs of books among the thousands of booksellers available. This will help ensure that you get the best pries possible without having to do the legwork yourself. - Local Book Sales: Take a trip to your local library; they typically have sales where you can find many great titles for merely a quarter! In addition, check out local yard sales and auctions where you can find many hidden gems at very inexpensive prices!
- E-Books: If you have a Kindle or other e-book reader, then you can download an entire book for less than two dollars. Even if you don’t have an e-book reader, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you can download the kindle app where you can download books to your device to read. There are even options where you can download e-books to your PC, an option far cheaper than purchasing a brand new hardback or paperback book.