College textbooks continue to rise in price along with tuition, and students continue to pay an excessive amount of money for them each semester. Students now spend an average of $900 per year on textbooks (1). Many students make use of used textbooks when they are available to help save some money. Unfortunately, at many local campus bookstores, NorthEastern included, used textbooks are hard to come by and they are almost just as much as the new textbooks.

Students now have the option to shop around for lower priced textbooks as more eCommerce stores have become available on the Internet. However, internet sites have the extra cost of shipping. In addition to costs, shipping sometimes takes several weeks to arrive, which may leave a student starting their classes without a textbook. Students need their textbooks fast, which traditional book websites like Amazon.com can not offer.

Fortunately, there are new websites forming that allow students to buy and sell textbooks directly with other students on campus. One notable such website is BookCurrency.com, which many NorthEastern students have started to use. It is free to register and to list your textbooks for sale at BookCurrency.com. As more and more Northeastern students continue to use sites like the one above, textbooks will become cheaper.

(1) RIPOFF 101: How the Current Practices of the Textbook Industry Drive Up the Cost of College Textbooks calpirg.org/reports/textbookripoff.pdf