Textbook how to

Save your money for other things; buy books cheaply, if at all

The rest of America has stopped going to bookstores. What keeps college students spending their loan money there?

College is expensive, but the Internet and its endless array of life loopholes, ways around things and places to buy anything is limitless. Use that.

It’s actually a fairly straightforward situation, one leaving us flabbergasted by anyone who opens their wallet in a college bookstore.

An off campus bookstore —now that’s a start. Great Lakes Bookstore could be a start, but there is an even sweeter option than that: the glorious Internet.

The easiest, and often best, choice is that online thrift shop Amazon.com. Providing just about every textbook a broke college kid could need, any edition, used or new, for a cost that would make the bookstore’s price tags blush.

The Internet also provides the auction option in the various variants of Ebay and the renting websites for the commitment-averse buyer.

There’s also the always preferable purchasing of a book from a fellow student, which provides the buyer with a cheap book and the seller with an easy, shipping-free sale that probably recoups more of the initial cost anyway.

Granted, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Wallets need not be opened, nor credit card information entered into the Internet’s ether. You may not need to buy the book, nor even have it at all.

Sometimes, the textbook isn’t even needed. It’s always wise to wait for a class or two to gauge whether the book is needed, and to ask a few friends who’ve already taken the class whether they really needed it.

There is also a lot of value in a book buddy. Find someone to go half-and-half with on books, trading the text back-and-forth those few times homework is due.

Save the hassle and just say no to buying bookstore textbooks. There are broke college kids who need the money more and Amazon mavens that aren’t ham-fistedly abusing the freshmen who just don’t know any better.

Bookstore-free is the way to be.