The prices of textbooks seem to rise with every academic year. Small fortunes are spent by students in their acquisition. To make matters even worse there are often new inclusion to existing syllabi. The start of an academics session sees most students stressed to stretch their budgets to accommodate expensive texts. Glum faces crowd book stores and even more glum ones come out loaded with material that will be useless to them once the year is out.
Cheaper Deals
Have heart though! If you know where to look there are plenty of cheap deals to be found.
For a small yearly fee you could join an Internet library. They are usually extremely well stocked. These are good not just for textbooks but also for supplementary readings and research material.
The next best thing to free is cheap. And it is not impossible. If you have time and the patience to wait out auctions you can get very good deals on at least some of the books in your syllabus. There are also several online stores that sell second hand, old and rejected copies of many a textbook. The rejected copies usually bear some very small defect that you can't even spot unless it is pointed out. You can expect these copies to cost you less than a fourth of the market price.
Free Free!
Have you tried finding your textbooks and material on Google Scholar? Try it. If you don't find what you need just do a simple Google search for it with free attached to the name. There might just be a site where you can download it free of cost.
In sheer variety of options net search for textbooks beats concrete and mortar stores hands down. Many still think that it is a time taking affair to order books online. Actually it just takes 4-5 days. If you plan in advance and free a little time you can save a lot of money.