The free online textbooks guide

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Introduction Free online textbooks do in fact exist, you just need to know where to look for them. Every year, college students spend enormous amounts of money on their required textbooks. These college textbooks can add up to over $1,000 in expenses, and that is for just a semester or quarter, not the entire school year. When students receive their syllabus or basic class information on the first day, many are told that they will need to purchase all of the books listed. However, the truth is that often times these instructors run out of time and simply cannot cover all of the materials listed. This might not be a big deal if it only happened occasionally. But, many current college students will tell you that they found out they didn’t even need the majority of “required” reading by the time the quarter or semester ended.

In this economy, where jobs are not a guarantee to graduating seniors, can you really wonder why students want free online textbooks?

With costs of higher education rising astronomically, every bit of money that a student can save, they will attempt to. Can you really blame them? With all of the information available today on the internet, finding free online textbooks is actually not too difficult. You may not be able to find a truly free textbook that is the exact same as the one you need, but how about all of the basic information that is contained within that textbook? Throughout my five years as an undergraduate, I literally scoured the internet for free textbooks online, and this site contains all of my up-to-date findings. Before anyone gets unnecessarily concerned, all of the effective methods that I discuss on this site are all legal, and there is no type of illegal activity or the endorsement of any illegal activity involved in locating free online textbooks in the methods discussed on this website. I feel that essentially forcing students to use a system that can leave them broke due to the costs associated with achieving their education should, and hopefully will, become a thing of the past very soon.

Should a student really be forced to purchase college textbooks adding up to thousands of dollars a year, when the very same information is available online, for free? The fact that many higher education professers write their own textbooks, then make them required reading for their classes, just smells somewhat fishy to me. Free online textbooks are not a myth, and I want college students to feel empowered with the information gained from the resources on this website. Am I promising that you will get to stop buying college textbooks completely after reading this site? Absolutely not, but I’d imagine you’ll be saving some serious money by utilizing little-known online resources to get you through your classes.

And don’t even get me started on the environmental waste that these clunky textbooks produce. I urge all students to stand up and for for their right to free information. I urge all students, around the globe, to fight for their right to free online textbooks.

In this online guide I have included SEVERAL methods to get free online textbooks. I am POSITIVE that you will be able to find at least one of these methods to be a true blessing. I sincerely hope that these tips help you out and save you some serious money over the years.

Using these same strategies, I hardly ever had to buy books each semester. I believe that the college system needs to take a deep introspective look at itself and then undergo some drastic changes in regards to textbook policy. They are letting the entire money-hungry system charge students upwards of a $1,000 for textbooks each year. Being a college student, I am sure you will agree with me that this is absolutely insane.

So without further ado, here is the Free Online Textbooks Guide that I compiled over several semesters of trial and error and MANY late-night frantic online searches. Oh yeah….You’re Welcome. Now go enjoy your access to free online textbooks.

Method #1 – EASY The first method that I often use is so ridiculously simple, yet some of my fellow classmates looked at me like I was some kind of an alien when I told them about it. I admit, it almost seems too easy.

OK, so the first week of classes you should get a printed out or online syllabus. On the syllabus is the exact book information that you will need for that particular course.

Below is an example of that information: A First Look at Communication Theory by Em Griffin, the leading textbook in the field of communication theory, published by McGraw Hill. (2009) Sixth Edition The syllabus will also probably list the ISBN and some other stuff that is only important if you plan on going to the university bookstore and throwing your money away.

So you take a close look at the title, author, and very important yet often overlooked: THE PUBLISHER! Well if you type the title, author, or publisher information of your required textbook into a major search engine such as Google…you might get a nice little surprise.

When you simply type in the title of this textbook, sitting there in front of your eyes, is the website: www.afirstlook.com. This kind of website is called a “Textbook Companion”. Click Here for a list of popular textbook companion websites.

If you click on this link, it takes you to the official textbook website. On this website is essentially everything you will need to pass this course. The majority of the chapters are located here…IN FULL. The chapters that are missing still have great summaries that should at least educate you enough to pass some quizzes. The site has practical application logs and extended information about the various communication theories discussed in the book. Basically there is more information located on this website than there is in the actual textbook!

So please enlighten me on why most professor’s choose not to mention the actual textbook and publishers’ websites…and instead let you trek to the bookstore and spend hundreds of dollars?

If you type in the title and are not really finding anything except online bookstores, try digging a little deeper. I recommend typing in the publisher, followed by something like “online chapters” or “read online”. Yes, it really is that simple. Also, try searching for information about the author: For example, Search “em griffin communication theory”. Basically just play around with different search phrases and you WILL find SOMETHING USEFUL. The BEST part about this method is that oftentimes the publisher websites will contain online flashcards and quizzes. Guess who also might be lazy and choose to use these quizzes for their classes instead of making their own? Yep, you guessed it, your professors!

Method #2 – Even Easier!

Below are two AWESOME sites that I stumbled upon over the years. You WILL find something useful on these sites. Thank me later!

Project Gutenberg Download college textbooks online – Visit http://www.gutenberg.org!

Project Gutenberg has over 20,000 free online books that you can download INSTANTLY. This site is great for any English/Lit classes that might come your way. Their online collection of classics and other books will blow you away!

Project Gutenberg is a free, online, digital library founded by Michael S. Hart in 1971. By its very nature, the Project Gutenberg website can help students find much needed academic materials and resources.

Art students studying about impressionist artists will find books containing information about artists like Cassatt, Manet, Renoir and Degas, among others, as well as post impressionists like Cezanne, Van Gogh, Saurat and Gaugin. They can also find information regarding abstract artists like Kandinsky and O’Keefe, as well as renaissance artitsts like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Donatello and Botticelli.

For those individuals studying literature, the list of authors whose works are available in Project Gutenberg’s catalog are nearly endless. If you’re studying early English literature you can be sure to find Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. You can also be sure to find work by Jane Austen such as Pride and Prejudice and Sense Studying mathematics and need to research works by Sir Issac Newton or need a few more resources on Euclidean geometry? Well, you’re in luck. You can access many of Sir Issac Newton’s works as well as the First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid on this site. You can also find information regarding probability and statistics as well as calculus and Infinitesimal Analysis.

Those interested in the sciences can find works by Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Charles Darwin, Robert Boyle and Michael Faraday, to name a few. Whether your subject is chemistry, physics, biology or geology, you can be sure to find something of interest related to your field of study on the Project Gutenberg website.

The usefulness of Project Gutenberg’s catalog to students is not limited to literature, the sciences or the arts. Those students researching the history of the civil war, for example, will be sure to find Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the Memoirs of General T. Sherman. Students researching world history can easily find information about ancient Egypt, Syria and Babylonia as well as many other civilizations.

Philosophy students can find works by Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; Chinese philosophers Lao Tsu and Confucius; British philosophers Bacon, Paine and Locke; and Russian philosophers Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky.

The Project Gutenberg website is easy to search through because they provide a search by author, subject or title. The site’s reading formats, such as HTML, ePUB, Kindle, plain text and audio, make it easy for students to access digitized content from their PC, laptop, Kindle device or mobile phone. Also listed on the website are Project Gutenberg’s affiliates which provide free access to more ebooks online.

Whether you’re subject of study is literature, science, art, history, mathematics or philosophy, you can

find a wealth resources in Project Gutenberg’s catalog. And the best part is that is is all for free.

Google Books Google Is All Powerful! Equally helpful to students is Google Books, a 100% searchable database of full online textbooks! Visit http://books.google.com.

Google Books is visually more appealing, showing book covers and titles in horizontal rows based on categories.

Although Google Books offers many of the same resources as Project Gutenberg, the access to some books and/or their previewing functionality may be limited. The “preview-only” books can be purchased via Google’s eBookstore. Works on Google Books are available in ePUB, PDF, plain text, viewable online as well as readable via Android and iPhone/iPad apps.

Whether your subject is literature, science, art, history, mathematics or philosophy, you can find a wealth of resources on Project Gutenberg as well as on Google Books. The best part is that they both are free.

P.S.: You’re Welcome!

Method #3 Below is a MASSIVE list of other free online textbooks sites that I have found on the net. Once again, I am sure you will find SOMETHING useful in this goldmine of links below! Also included is an extensive list of free online college level courses!

Click Here to view our collection of free online textbooks — available for instant download/access — about all different kinds of academic subjects like Algebra, Geometry, Physics, Foreign Languages, Business, English & Literature, etc! If you can’t find a free, open alternative or version of the textbook you need for school in our collection, then we encourage you to take a look at the websites below.

Free Textbooks and/or Course Notes Free etextbooks are sorely needed by college students, many of the books that college students need can cost up to $200 a piece. With free textbooks the student saves money, they can read their books online very easily, and many schools offer their own etextbooks for students that cannot afford the hard copy of the book.

Open textbooks are college textbooks, typically available as etextbooks, that are offered online from the university or college. These books are offered for free to students through digital access. The student can download a copy of their textbook through a designated download link, usually provided by their school. Instructors can adjust the text to suit their specific course needs and remove certain chapters, etc. This is great for students that cannot afford to purchase the textbook in time for when class starts.

Aussie Educator Textbooks — has an extensive collection of textbooks Bibliomania reference books, literature notes, study guides, articles, interviews…

Bookboon concise free textbooks that contain advertising Business Textbook Internet Library– many business areas Community College Consortium Open Educational Resources Open Content Creative Commons — click on Find CC Licensed Work, enter the subject area Digital Book Index provides links to more than 130,000 title records, 90,000 of these books are free.

Economic Textbooks has books for economics majors and professionals.

Free Non-business Textbooks from Anthropology to Software and Sociology and beyond.

Freeload Press has free college textbooks paid for with advertising.

Global Text Project — click on the Books tab.

Gradesaver Online Study Guides — extensive listing grouped alphabetically for easier access.

HippoCampus has audio/video lectures on Algebra, American Government, Biology, Calculus, Environmental Science, Physics, Religion, and U.S. History. iLumina has sharable undergraduate teaching materials for chemistry, biology, physics, math, and CS. science.

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (US) provides access to content of popular courses.

Light and Matter open source physics textbooks Mathematics textbooks online — George Cain, School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology MBA Prerequisite Books and Notes — many business areas MIT OpenCourseWare National Academies Press, The — read more than 3 000 books online.

Online Books Internet Library –many areas, especially literature.

Online Medical Textbooks — has a wide a variety.

Online Science and Math Textbooks — biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals

Open Book Project seeks to encourage and coordinate collaboration among students and teachers Open College Textbooks is a commercial digital-textbook publisher offering free open textbooks.

Open Course Ware Finder allows users to search six open courseware sites simultaneously.

Oxford Scholarship Online — monographs in many academic areas and 1,350 Oxford books.

Perseus Digital Library, The from Tufts University, Perseus Digital Library brings a wide range of source materials.

Pink Monkey — study guides, book notes, and online textbooks for 15 subjects.

Quick Notes Course Outlines — accounting, economics, statistics, mathematics Saskatchewan University (CA) has general engineering class notes.

Science Texts an extensive list from Professor Mark Dubin, at the University of Colorado Sparknotes study guides in booklet form covering a range of areas is predominantly Language based.

The Assayer coves many areas, specializes in math and science.

Tufts OpenCourseWare Wikibooks open-content textbooks — many diverse areas Web-Books.Com has over 1,000 free public domain e-book downloads.

World Wide School® Library — Literature, Social Sciences etc. divided into language sub-directories.

Many students learn through auditory presentation and others learn visually, therefore digital textbooks are an excellent learning tool for those that learn in an unconventional way. Etextbooks allow the student to search for specific items and go to specific pages with one click. Etextbooks also allow the reader to receive updated versions of the book with ease. Free, digital textbooks and course notes can be located from colleges and university websites, as well as other etextbook repositories online. These kinds of textbooks can typically be downloaded to several mobile devices and are capable of being read anywhere. Etextbooks allow students to utilize several books at a time and access them without the need for a book bag!

Free Courses Online classes are great for many students because so many students are older and working or they have families, and with online classes they can have a full time job and take a full schedule of classes and study whenever they have a free moment. With online classes the student does not have to sit in a classroom and they don’t have to worry about transportation costs. They can do their class work anytime anywhere without ever leaving their home or they can do it while they are on the go.

100 Free Online Ivy League Courses Academic Earth – Video lectures from the world’s top scholars National Repository of Online Courses — high school, AP and college courses Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative Johns Hopkins Notre Dame Open Course Ware Consortium has an extensive list of open courses by country.

Sofia from Foothill-De Anza CC with testing material makes this truly a user friendly site.

Utah University Utah Open Courseware Alliance Yale Open Educational Resources Initiative University of California’s College Prep Online (Advanced Placement and other courses online) OpenTextBook.org is a registry of textbooks and text book material that is open in accordance with the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD).

Wikibooks — offers over 30,000 open-content textbooks.

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, which was founded by the Foothill-

De Anza Community College District and the League for Innovation in the Community College.

The Free Textbook Project help in creating and sharing educational materials.

Free textbooks/open textbooks and online classes are essential for learning in today’s world. Many colleges and universities are getting in on the act and they are providing more and more textbooks for students via digital media at no cost to the student, evident by our list above.

Method #4 Google Scholar – This is an extremely useful database of scholarly materials including books, articles, and journals. Now, oftentimes the entire book is not available for free. However, I have used this site MANY times in order to write research papers, because the information it “pulls up” is usually sufficient enough.

Visit http://www.scholar.google.com.

Google scholar is more than a practical application for students and researchers. It’s a search engine that’s specialized for a few specific types of professional research content. This specialized material comprises a small subset – a galaxy, perhaps – in the unending universe of information that comprises the web. But for professionals and students alike, it’s not just practical, it’s indispensible.

The service has two primary content types: legal and scientific. More importantly, it focuses on information from documented or published sources and thus excludes the vast and often tawdry world of the blogosphere and other unsubstantiated sources.

So what does it do for you as a student?

Geologists have recently suggested a new time period in geologic history: the Anthropocene. Some scholars believe that humans began to alter the course of earth history irrevocably as early as eight thousand years ago. The Anthropocene has been proposed as the geologic time period during which human engineering has had a substantial impact on the geologic record.

Suppose you’re a student and you want to write a paper about the Anthropocene for a class. If you Google “Anthropocene” with plain vanilla Google, you’ll get 330,000 hits. On the other hand, a simple search on Google Scholar yields 4100 hits – large, but far more manageable than 330,000! You can refine that search on either application, but before you do, take a look at the first ten hits from each.

Regular Google yields a variety of articles from sources like the New York Times and National Geographic. Not acceptable references for a university level science paper. Google Scholar yields a different set of results: all from scientific journals or the societies that publish them. Your professor will certainly accept references from publications like “American Journal of Science” and “Climatic Change.”

You can narrow your search on either platform. But Google Scholar offers search options specifically tailored to academic research. Simple Google Scholar searches look for the key word throughout entire papers. By searching for the key word only in the title of the paper, you reduce your search results from 4100 to 178!

You can narrow your search further yet. You might want to figure out who first published the idea of the Anthropocene. In advanced search, select the years 1990-2000. No results. You’ve narrowed the field substantially! Moving the time frame to 2000-2002, you find a mere eight results.

The first paper listed, by P.J. Crutzen, has a link to the abstract in “Journal de Physique.” With one click, you hit the abstract and discover that P.J. Crutzen proposed that the Anthropocene began in 1784 with the invention of the steam engine. Ba-da-Bing! Now, searching from 2003-2005, you discover that, in 2003, Crutzen revisited his initial idea in an editorial in “Climatic Change” on the basis of work

by Ruddiman, who proposed backing up the start of the Anthropocene to 5000-8000 years ago. Ba-daBoom! Off you go to search “Ruddiman.”

In fifteen or twenty minutes, you’ve accomplished what would take hours hiking through the stacks in the library — if you’re at a major university. If you’re at a smaller school, the relevant papers and abstracts might not be available at all.

Google scholar is indeed a very practical application for students and researchers alike. The example here is from basic scientific research, but the tools work great for legal material as well.

Method #5 – An Offline Tactic That Can REALLY Save You Some Moolah I know you may not frequent your university library too often due to the invention of this thing called: “the internet”, but it can be a goldmine of free information if you know how to use it the right way.

Go to the library at the start of the semester or quarter. Check out their catalog (usually searchable on a computer, just ask an assistant) and search for some of your required textbooks. If you can find some, chances are they are circulated and you can access them for an extended period of time. Make sure you ALWAYS fill out the renewal form though!

Also, see if your school has any type of lending consortium. If your librarian says that you do, ask her if you can look up textbooks at other local colleges. If you can do this, you can order the books for free online and then have them shipped to your school’s library.

If you’re lucky, the college library will own a copy of the textbook you need, or be able to import it from elsewhere upon request — although this may take time. If you’re very lucky, no one else will have checked it out yet. Be sure to check your class textbook requirements before school begins, and place a hold on the book if you aren’t able to physically pick it up right away. The sooner you try to check it out, the more likely you are to actually get it.

There are some potential problems with this plan. Depending on your status with your college library, the length of time for which you can check out a book may vary anywhere from a week to the entire school session. You might only get the book for the beginning of your classes. This is good news if you weren’t the first person there, but bad news otherwise. You should be able to renew through the college library, as mentioned above, provided no one else has placed a hold on the book. Alternatively, if you find all the copies are checked out, you can check their due dates and place a hold for yourself.

You may also be forced to return the book to your college library if someone else places an immediate recall. Your return deadline will instantly be shifted to within a week or less. This can lead to a recall battle among students, and is generally considered impolite. However, professors can recall any book they need, especially for the students in their classes, and especially if they forgot to put a copy on reserve.

If all your efforts to procure your own copy through your college library have failed, the library reserves is your back-up. Usually your professor will have contacted the college library to place a copy of the textbooks for your class on reserve. This may mean an extremely reduced check-out period— from two days to two hours—or it may mean the textbook has to remain within the college library limits. Reserves is most useful when you only need a textbook for problem sets or a short-term project, not the actual reading material. It is also an excellent place to run into fellow classmates and compose study groups – you are already in a college library, after all.

Even if you don’t manage to check out and hold on to your own college library textbook, your professors should make sure there is a copy on reserve, and you can ask them to if they haven’t. Free textbook access should be available through college libraries, one way or another. Your tuition fees are already funding this institution, so be sure to make the most of your college library.

Method #6 – IF ALL ELSE FAILS Amazon – Buy access to the online version and you can read your textbook immediately. This has saved me in a pinch on some rare occasions that none of the above techniques helped me. This is a good last-minute emergency tactic. If you own a Kindle, you can download the digital textbook you need right onto your reading device. You do not need a Kindle in order to read the online textbooks for sale on Amazon, but you will need to download a Kindle Reading application that will allow you to download textbooks to read right from your computer. One nice thing about Amazon’s online textbooks is that they are accessible via various electronic devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PC and Mac. Also, you can usually download the first chapter of the textbook you need for free.

It was inevitable, electronic books are going to one day completely place paper books into the realm of the vinyl record and the 8-track cassette. The new venture of Amazon into the world of textbooks is just the beginning of the end. Yes, Amazon, in addition to its wide variety of eBooks, is now offering textbooks online to college students via its eBook reader, the Kindle. Among the benefits provided by these Amazon online textbooks is the fact that students can save as much as 80% over paper books.

Students can choose how long they want to rent their Amazon online textbooks for, from 30 days to 360 days. When the period of rental expires students are presented with the choice of either buying their Amazon online textbooks outright, or else renting them again. The flexibility in pricing and the ease with which the Kindle allows this to be done makes a difference for a broke college student.

Sure, it is possible to resell a paper book and so this move by Amazon is certain to eat into that incomestream for college students, but the savings and convenience from using Kindle textbooks cannot be ignored. It should be noted, also, that many of the more popular textbooks used on college campuses are not available as Amazon online textbooks for the Kindle at present. The key words there being “at present”. It is inevitable that they will be at some point, so it may be wise for those who have these books on hand to take advantage of the fact that they can still be sold. Still, the fact that the Amazon online textbooks will now eat into the market for used paper textbooks means that there is some question as to how well it will be received.

It should be noted that the available inventory of Amazon online textbooks include a disproportionate number of technical and social sciences textbooks. Not so many humanities texts.

It is not necessary to own a Kindle in order to access these Amazon online textbooks. Blackberry has a Kindle app that users can install, as do users of Android Phones and iPads. These apps are all free, the users only have to pay for the textbooks. The process is simple, visit the Amazon site and search for the book, the book’s page will indicate whether it has a Kindle version or not. Simply purchase the Kindle version and download it to the device.

For those who like to take notes in the margins of textbooks, note that they will face no restrictions with the Kindle as there is a notation function that makes it possible to write notes to go along with their Kindle textbook.

Note that the latest version of the Kindle is on the way: the full-color Kindle Fire will not only have the ability to display books, including Amazon online textbooks, it will also have a web-browser and be reasonably priced ($199), perfect for college students who cannot afford an iPad, which is many.

Method #7 Checking out textbook rental services is another method that you can use to save money on your required textbooks for the semester. Textbook rentals are great short-term solution to combat the ridiculously inflated costs of textbooks. Is the focus of your studies involve the subject of technology or any subject that is rapidly evolving and thus requires constantly updated textbooks every year, you may have a little more difficulty utilizing this method to save money. However, you should certainly give it a shot as you can often save around 70% on your textbook purchases over the course of the academic year.

This article focuses primarily on the textbook rental companies and programs currently available. For a more in-depth analysis of the textbook rental process as a whole, click here.

U.S. Congress has recently donated a large sum of money to assist American universities with launching their own textbook rental programs. So the first thing I would do is check to see if your college and the bookstore(s) affiliated with your college are implementing any type of textbook rental services. As this business model grows in popularity, you can expect to see more colleges adapting their own programs. So do not give up all hope if you come to find out that your University currently offers no sort of textbook rental service. The larger and more popular campuses throughout the States will probably start offering their own rental programs within the next few years.

Okay, so you discovered that your college does not currently offer a textbook rental program. No problem, you’ve currently got several online options to assist you in your money-saving quest.

The most popular option seems to be www.Chegg.com. Chegg estimates that there are over 4 million titles currently available to university students within their online catalog. The amount of money you save through their services will vary according to the specific textbooks that you rent throughout the semester. In general, most students discover that they can rent their required textbook from Chegg for around half of the textbook’s standard retail price. Another helpful money-saving feature with their program is that they cover all of the shipping costs for the textbook rentals. This cost-saving feature can end up saving you over $100 over the course of an academic year.

However, the popular offline and online bookseller www.BarnesandNoble.com started up its own textbook rental program in January, 2010. It is important to note that Barnes & Noble already owns over 600 college bookstores as well. The Barnes & Noble textbook rental service appears to take you through the same type of process as their competitor Chegg.com. Most of the reports coming out regarding Barnes & Noble’s textbook rental program state that students are able to rent their textbooks at around 42% of their standard price, on average. Barnes & Noble’s textbook rental program appears to provide for an added convenience as well. The program encourages students to rent their textbooks either from their local college bookstore or directly online. The students can then pick up their textbook rental from the bookstore after it has been shipped.

So what are the other online options for textbook rentals? One commonly-used option is www.BookRenter.com.

Another option is www.CampusBookRentals.com.

And yet another popular option is www.Textbooks.com. Textbooks.com sells their textbooks online, but they are known for offering a 100% guaranteed buyback after you no longer need them. This would effectively make their business model a “semi-rental” textbook service, but they are usually much better of an option for penny-pinching college students than going out and purchasing a brand new textbook from the local University bookstore and then selling that same book back to the bookstore.

Also, students have reported that Textbooks.com may be the overall cheapest option across the most

popular textbook subjects, but there textbook rental service requires an initial investment of $117.50.

We’re not done yet. Another reliable newcomer to the textbook rental scene is www.CengageBrain.com.

Last but not least is www.eCampus.com. This website offers textbook rentals services, along with the ability to buy and sell your textbooks. They also offer eTextbooks.

Method #8 This method can save you a ton of money on textbooks! What you really need to do is find out all the textbooks that you’re required to buy, and then go online and search out the International Edition textbooks for those subjects. International edition textbooks are available for most of the popular textbooks out there, you just might have to do a little extra digging and have a little bit of patience.

On average, you will save about 50% if you can locate and purchase the international version of your required textbooks. Believe it or not, I’ve actually come close to saving nearly 75% on two separate occasions by using this method to buy two different chemistry textbooks. As great as this method is, you will often need to do a little bit of extra “detective work” to ensure that you receive exactly what you need and exactly what you paid for.

Currently, one of the most popular online sources for international textbooks is http://www.AbeBooks.com. When utilizing this method, the first thing you need to consider is that the international edition textbook will more than likely have a different ISBN than the United States edition. So, in order to effectively search around the Internet for your required textbook, you will probably want to narrow your search down by focusing on the author and title at first. After you establish an author and title match for your textbook, you should ensure that the revisions and numbered “editions” match-up as well.

If the textbook you’re required to buy includes a ton of supplementary material and interactive CDs that you know your professor will be requiring you to work with, you will certainly want to ensure that any of this material is included in the international edition textbook. In my own experiences, I have never encountered a problem with missing supplementary material or anything like that. Not to mention, most of the courses I’ve taken throughout the years never even made use of the textbooks’ supplementary materials to begin with.

The key to success with this method is clear communication with the textbook seller. You should ensure that they are communicating every important detail regarding the textbook in question. If you have any questions or concerns about purchasing the textbook, be sure to communicate your inquiries to the seller before you make your purchase. This is extremely important to remember because these textbooks are obviously going to be shipped from overseas.

Due to this fact, you’re going to want to make sure that everything is truly on the “up and up” before your textbook(s) begins its long transit. This also means that you will need to order your international edition textbooks as soon as possible before you’re actually required to use them. Some people have reported waiting on their textbook delivery for nearly three weeks, so get to ordering them now if you’re going to need them by next month!

Method #9 If you need access to a certain textbook, and you need access to it fast, searching for eTextbooks can potentially lead you to a fast and productive solution. You can download etextbooks instantly after purchasing them. After downloading, you can read most of the eTextbooks out there directly in your internet browser. You can usually access these textbooks directly from your Iphone, Ipod, Ipad, and other mobile devices as well. Most are compatible with Adobe Reader, so they can be viewed on just about every Adobe Reader-capable device including the popular Kindle.

Several companies are leading the way forward within the eTextbooks community.

Click Here To Visit The CengageBrain Website – CengageBrain is a fairly new provider of not only full Etextbooks, but also individual echapters too. The website gives three separate “access length” options to suit students of varying needs. If you think that you will only need to focus on a few specific chapters, sections, or units of a certain textbook, these guys might be your best option. Oftentimes, you can purchase individual electronic chapters of the popular textbook titles for only $1.99! Their digital textbook content is delivered in sPDF format, which is essentially a secured PDF file. The file is secured with DRM (Digital Rights Management) software in order to protect the copyrighted educational content. You can print out most of the material after purchasing, but you should be aware that it will be stamped with your name and information. This is another protective measure that the company enacted in order to prevent copyright abuses in the future.

Click Here To Visit The eCampus Website – eCampus is another popular choice for browsing the available etextbooks out there on the web. The company claims that they currently have over 100,000 electronic textbook titles available. With a constantly evolving database that large, there’s a good chance that they can help you save some money.

Click Here To Visit The Barnes & Noble Website – Barnes & Noble has recently broken into the etextbook industry as well. They’re probably worth checking out as they have launched a 7-day free trial featuring most of their etextbook titles. With such a powerful foundation rooted in the traditional book industry, their electronic textbook program looks to be very promising. It will be interesting to see how etextbooks are utilized, expanded on, and enhanced within their Nook digital reader device as well.

Click Here To Visit The Textbooks.com Website – Textbooks.com is a very popular choice for students when searching for their required educational materials in an online format.

In order to effectively search websites like the ones mentioned above, it is recommended that you know the exact ISBN number of the required textbook. Professors regularly include the ISBN number of the textbooks they want their students to use for class on the class syllabus.

Method #10 This method is a HUGE time-saver and it will keep you extremely well-informed with a few keystrokes! I don’t know about you, but I am an avid Internet shopping and research “junky”. So, before I purchase something, I always feel the need to frantically scavenge the web for the listed prices and reviews of the product in question. This habit and hobby of mine has saved me money in the past, so I naturally started doing the same thing when it came to buying textbooks and researching all of the price differences out there on the Internet. I mean everybody wants to get the absolute BEST deal available to them, it is only natural. This is especially true when people are forced to pay a large amount of money for the same type of product consistently, just as students are forced to do with textbooks these days.

Check out some of these textbook price comparison websites and ISBN search engines below to locate the best prices for your required textbooks! These websites allow you to compare textbook prices from all of the major offline and online textbook distributors. Most of these websites allow you to perform a textbook search for the prices by book title, topic keywords, author name, and/or ISBN number. Many of these textbook search platforms also give you the option to search for the highest textbook buyback price currently being offered by all of the major companies. This option will help you get the most money back at the end of every semester or quarter! Combined with free shipping and other promotions, the amount of money to be saved is quite substantial.

Textbook Price Comparison Engines & ISBN Search Engines Click Here to use the Amazon.com Textbook Search Engine http://www.ISBN.nu http://www.ISBN.org http://www.directtextbook.com http://www.comparetextbooks.net http://www.bigwords.com BigWords is another invaluable resource for college students. BigWords makes it mark by comparing prices from all the top textbook stores and shows the customer the best prices currently available. The site even goes as far as to offer comparisons on student loans, renting DVD’s and video games.

Combined with their portable device apps, promotions, and free shipping, Big Words is definitely a top contender for purchasing textbooks online. http://www.allbookstores.com http://www.bookfinder.com http://www.textbookly.com Compare textbook rental services with the following websites: http://www.textbookrentals.com and http://www.rentscouter.com! http://www.textbookland.com http://www.bookfinder4u.com http://www.bookeagle.com http://www.HookerBooks.com

http://www.booksprice.com http://finderscheapers.com http://www.bookstoreprices.com http://www.gettextbooks.com Click Here To Visit The Chegg Website Chegg goes above and beyond trying to provide a great experience for college students who wish to purchase their textbooks online. Along with being able to rent and buy texbooks, they offer a twenty one day “Any Reason” guarantee for you to return your books if you are not satisfied. Two day shipping means good news for the procrastinators. Taking convenience a step further, the site also sells and rents eBooks in which you can highlight, take notes, copy and print. ETextbooks can be returned within fourteen days for a full refund. http://www.campusbooks.com CampusBooks is a price comparison engine for college textbooks. They have an app for portable devices with a GPS function that enables you to search libraries and bookstores near you for the materials you need to buy or rent. This site allows you to buy, rent and sell textbooks, and offers coupons and price alerts to help you maximize your savings. http://www.textbooksrus.com TextbooksRus is another useful textbook price comparison website. Not only do they buy, sell and rent books, but they also participate in DVD, Blu-Ray and video game rentals. Once you’re done with the materials, you can also sell them back to TextbooksRus by using their online buyback tool. They even allow you to ship those items to them for free. Choosing to be paid via a credit to their site will earn you an extra five percent cash back on top of what they will be purchasing your items for.

Method #11 We all know that Google is the “all-powerful search engine master”. But, a lot of people don’t realize that Google has TONS of advanced “search operators” that you can use to help you find all kinds of useful information regarding your required textbooks. Listed below are some of the advanced “search operator” strategies that I’ve used in the past to really “drill down” and locate the exact type of educational material I was after. Take the time and learn a couple of these advanced search “tricks”, as I bet you will be amazed at how quickly you can get to the textbook information you’re after. Of course, you could just continue endlessly clicking through pages and pages of Google search results hoping to get lucky. allintext: If you start your Google search query with “allintext:”, Google will only give you websites that contain all the search terms you specify in the text of their webpage. For example, [ allintext: biology smith 7th edition ] will return only pages in which the words “biology,” “smith,” and “7th” and “edition” appear in the text of the page. This specific search capability can also be accessed through the Advanced Web Search page, under Occurrences. allintitle: If you start your search query with “allintitle:”, Google will only give you websites that contain all the search terms you specify in their title. For example, [ allintitle: myers psychology chapter 7 ] will return only pages that contain the words “myers” and “psychology” and “chapter 7″ in the title. This specific search capability can also be accessed through the Advanced Web Search page, under Occurrences.

When you are using the “allintitle:” command, don’t attempt to use any other search operators at the same time.

Also, if you want to look for a specific string of words or a specific phrase, you can wrap that phrase in quotes when using these same commands discussed above. For example, allintitle: “elementary statistics” will give you websites that contain the exact phrase “elementary statistics” in their title, and not pages that contain “elementary” and “statistics” anywhere in their title. So this search wouldn’t give you websites that are titled: “I love elementary school! I also love statistics!”, but it would give you websites that are titled “Elementary Statistics 9th Edition” and so on. allinurl: If you start your search query with “allinurl:”, Google will give you websites that contain all the search terms you specify in the URL, also know as the website address. For example, [ allinurl: coursesmart answers ] will return only websites that contain the words “coursesmart” and “answers” in the URL, such as “www.coursesmart.com/help/answers.html”. This specific capability can also be accessed through the Advanced Web Search page, under Occurrences.

In URLs, words are often run together. They do not need to run together when you’re using the “allinurl:” search operator. filetype: If you include “filetype:suffix” in your search query, Google will only give you documents that are in your requested format. For example, [ greek history study filetype:pdf ] will return Adobe Acrobat pdf files that match the terms “greek”, “history”, and “study”. You can limit the Google search results to web pages whose names end with both pdf and doc by using the OR operator, e.g. [ industrial revolution benefits filetype:pdf OR filetype:doc ].

When you don’t specify an exact File Format in the Advanced Search Form or by using the “filetype:”

operator, Google will automatically search through a variety of formats.

Using these advanced search engine strategies, you should be able to uncover a wealth of educational material in a very short amount of time. Google has tons of advanced “search operators�, but these ones are what I have used in college to find solid information involving textbook material in general. You will never what is really out there until you give it a shot! You just might surprise yourself.

Visit FreeOnlineTextbooks.net for more information.