Divide By Zero - a blog by Kamran Ayub

Since I ordered my books already today, I don’t see why I can’t share some of my tips with you fellow college students.

Tip 1: Don’t Buy From Your Bookstore. Ever.

There’s no reason you need to ever buy from your college bookstore, as long as its more expensive than anything you find online.

99% of the time your college bookstore exorbitantly raises its price. Once in awhile a book will cost less there just because it’s old. I maybe have bought 2 books at the bookstore during my 2 years of college.

Tip 2: Search Online Using ISBN, NOT Title

I’ve seen it happen. You find this great deal on your textbook and you order it. When you get it, it says “Study Guide.� I made that mistake. Always search via ISBN number because it usually guarantees you’ll find the exact book. That brings me to my next point…

Tip 3: LOOK OUT for International Editions

When searching by ISBN you will come across International Editions. Here’s a pro tip: even though they are cheaper, don’t buy them. Because when you want to sell it, they’ll be worth about $5. Plus, even though the contents of the books are usually the same, the problems are almost always different. Case in point: I bought my Accounting book as an International edition. Guess what? ALL the problems in the back of the book used different monetary values than the US edition. I had to go and write in all the proper numbers from the problems on my syllabus. Now I can’t really even sell the damn book.

My girlfriend bought a textbook as an international edition and she can’t sell it on Amazon for more than $3 or so. Plus no one will see it on Amazon because it has to the the same ISBN… and guess what, people search for the US edition ISBN, not the international! You may have better luck listing your book on AbeBooks, people seem to sell it under the US ISBN anyway.

Tip 4: Use Trusted Websites

This is so you won’t get jipped. Use a site like the ones I mention below so that if something goes wrong you can easily return it. Always look at people’s return policy, condition, and description of the book.

How I Bought My Books

So today, I went onto my U account and looked at the books I needed for my classes. Since I’ve had experience with this, it didn’t take me long to find my books online and order them within about 15 minutes.

If you don’t like scouring the interwebz for the best deal (like me), you can use a site like CampusBooks.com to find what you’re looking for.

Personally, I use two websites because I’ve never had problems with them. AbeBooks and Amazon Marketplace.

About half the time, AbeBooks has much better deals than Amazon does. Once in awhile, you’ll see a better deal on Amazon. I bought two books today, let’s see how much I saved.

So, let’s see, I saved $147.25. Not bad, eh? And all US editions, too.