At this time of year, it’s always a struggle to decide if you should save money up front by purchasing used textbooks (when they still apply, that is, given how often they change) or if you should pony up the extra dough for new ones that will have a higher trade-in/buy-back value at the end of the year. Decisions, decisions…

Of course, you can always hedge your bets by finding places to purchase new textbooks at a discount… In the past, I’ve usually done a mix. (Not always by choice – again, schools and especially teacher/writers like to change the material often to create built-in obsolence, thus future sales!!) I don’t like to buy used books if they have a ton of highlighting/underlining by someone else, but I also hate paying full retail when I don’t have to.

If you’re looking for a great price, here are some of the places I’ve found that often have great used books, new books and a mix of both. There’s even a place where you can read them in a digital version or print them out for yourself at an amazing discount:

Amazon.com Textbook Store – Up to 30% Off

iChapters – eBooks are always 50% off the textbook print version

eBay – Over 130,000 New and Used Textbooks

I won’t say how old I am, but let’s just say that when I went to college (the FIRST time), textbooks were really only available new and from the college bookstores where they could charge anything they pretty much wanted per title since they had you in a death grip. (Okay, a few used discounted textbooks were available, but only if you wanted to stand in long lines and hope you got one before they ran out – usually with the person in front of you getting the last cheap one and giving you an evil grin as he or she walked out past you with their prize…)

Now while I love collecting books and reading them and selling the ‘extras’, textbooks are something I leave to the professionals (and because we haven’t the room for them, not to mention some are too big and heavy to lift!). Too many titles out there to count, along with having no idea which edition is required by which schools for which year and so on makes them an area I prefer to let someone else deal with on a day-to-day basis.

So this year, while helping friends and family do a little research on how to save a few bucks on their school’s required reading materials (since I don’t carry them or I’d only be too happy to sell them some), I came across a neat deal over at Amazon: right now they’re offering up to 30% off quite a few new books plus when you use code TBFALL07 at checkout, and if you spend over $200 on selected new titles, you get free 2-Day shipping so you’ll have the books in time for semester start for the same price as slow shipping. (And nowadays, it really doesn’t take long to get to $200 in textbooks at the college level, even discounted, does it?) Plus Amazon has used college textbooks at up to 90% off. (If only they had this back in 1981, oops, I mean 1991, arrgh, I mean 2001, right, 2001 is what I meant!! – maybe I could have afforded to also buy a CD or 20 at the same time for something to listen to while I studied, hummm?)

As a little added bonus, Amazon.com is giving away one year of free tuition to one lucky student in their Tuition & Textbooks Sweepstakes. Their 50 second-place winners will receive $1,000 in free textbooks, while 1,000 third-place winners get a free textbook up to $150. Enroll yourself or a family member today–the last day to enter is October 6, 2007.

So if you haven’t finished hunting the wild textbook for this semester, here’s your chance to save a little (so you can then spend it on NEXT semester’s required textbooks!)