I've bought all my schoolbooks for the year. Want the total?
I think I might need to still buy one more book, so the title isn't quite correct, but I'm pretty much all done.
I spent $114.39 at half.com and $87.61 at Amazon. However, thanks to the many of you that signed up for Swagbucks using the links in my Swagbucks post, I had enough Amazon gift cards to pay for my Amazon order. Yay! You all are awesome...thank you!
So, my total out of pocket expenses for schoolbooks this year was only $114.39. And even without the Swagbucks, my total still would have been just $202. This is a huge, huge discount from the normal prices for these books. A single Saxon math book can easily cost $40-$50 alone, and I've got 3 people using Saxon math.
And don't worry...I did actually buy a lot of books for my kids (they're not going without!). I just didn't pay anything close to full price for them.
My biggest and best bargain-hunting tool is half.com, a site I've written about before (I am not affiliated with them, though! I just love them to pieces.). It's like a frustration-free, no-auction version of Ebay and it rocks. I can find non-consumable schoolbooks with nary a problem there, and I can often even find consumable books.
So, half.com is my first stop, and if I can't find something there, I will sometimes look on Ebay even though I dislike the auction format and I think that most of the Buy It Now stuff is overpriced. This year, because of my Swagbucks rewards, I checked Amazon
. They've got a lot of good second-hand book for sale, so if half.com doesn't have what you need, Amazon is a good alternative (and if you have Swagbucks rewards, Amazon is a GREAT alternative!).
Half.com is still my first love, though.
Of course, buying books on half.com isn't quite as easy as ordering them brand new, so here are a few tips.
First, if you know what book you want, find the ISBN on a traditional online store, and then enter that into the search box on half.com. Half.com, lovely though it is, is not long on book descriptions. So, if you're searching for Math 76, it's hard to tell which result is the teacher's manual, which is the student text, and which is the meeting book. Having the correct ISBN ensures that you'll be ordering the right book.
Buy a book that's Like New or Good instead of one that's Brand New. In most instances, this can save you a lot of money, and the quality will only take a slight hit. If your kids are like mine, their schoolbooks are going to look, uh, not brand-new by the end of the year anyways, so it doesn't make sense to pay more for a book that just has a nicer cover.
Consider buying a partially-used consumable book. As a rule, consumable books are much harder to locate on the used market, so the pickings are sometimes slim. Oftentimes you can find a consumable with only the first 10-20 pages used, though, because a family will buy a book, start using it, and then decide it doesn't work. As long as you don't think the early pages are going to be super-essential for your child, this is a great way to save some money.
If possible, buy several books from the same seller to get a discount on shipping. There are some pretty big book sellers on half.com, so if you keep an eye on the seller you're buying a book from, you may be able to score a few from the same seller and save yourself a few dollars on shipping. Half.com automatically reduces shipping costs when you purchase 2 or more items from a single seller, so this requires no effort on your part or on the part of the seller.
If you're a homeschooler still in need of books, you should definitely give half.com a try. And if you're in college and still need some books, you should really check half.com before you head out to the (over-priced) college bookstore. The amount of money you can save yourself is staggering (and you can sell your books back on half.com when you're done with them. But that's another post for another day.).
Today's 365 post: My sewing machine has been busy.
disclosure
Another good resource for scouring the web for books is fetchbook.com. You don't actually buy them through there - it's a search portal for used books.
And I'm another vote for half.com. I have one college student (in addition to 2 home schooling) and we've been able to save a TON buying his books online instead of used at the bookstore. This semester alone we saved over $200 off the used bookstore prices.
Quick question - Do you have to pay the shipping costs when you buy used on Amazon and use your swagbuck cards?
Blessings on the journey~
When I made my Amazon order (which included some used books), I was able to to use my Amazon gift cards for the entire bill. Yay!
I've never heard of fetchbook...I'll have to check that out.
I have never used half.com, might have to look into that when looking for somthing. (I usually do ebay, or amazon) Great for the savings.
Have you tried thriftbooks.com ? I haven't ordered from them yet.(been using the local library) But i have searched around on them. I am also not sure if they sell text books,because I have never looked for them. Might be something eles to check out.
Do subjects like Math or English or (very basic) Science ever really change much? Save for the books falling apart, what's the big need for schools to rush out and buy the latest and greatest textbooks?
My elementary school had 20 year old English books before they decided that the school needed all new textbooks so the kids would learn better ... or something.
Also, you've gotta love Amazon gift cards, don't you? 🙂
I like to frequent abebooks.com when looking for used books/out of print books. Sometimes the shipping combined with the price of the book is more than what I would pay buying new from Amazon, but not all the time! I at least give it a check before placing my homeschool orders for the year.
I love love love <3 <3 <3 Saxon!! I think they are the greatest math books ever!!! When I tool upper level chemistry and physics in college I noticed that I had done a lot of similar problems in Saxon math. They work a lot of science word questions in to their word problems and you don't even notice until you take a science. I love them. I can't wait to let my kids explore math through them. I have been collecting them at church yardsales and booksales since getting married. My husband always looks at me and says, "we don't even have kids yet." ha.
I love saxon math!
I always bought all of my university textbooks at the bookstore because I didn't have a credit card until my senior year of school (not to mention this was several years ago and internet shopping wasn't as big then). While saving money on books is a good idea, I would worry that a lot of university students wouldn't be so good at paying off the credit card bill.
I also love Saxon Math! In my 36 years of teaching, we never used a Math series that got better results in our students! Even though some people think they are "dry", they use a good, basic, repetitive way of teaching skills that seems to work very well with the majority of kids. Our achievement test scores soared when we implemented this series!
To answer Battra92's question about getting new textbooks too often, our state, and I imagine most others, require that our textbooks be no more than five years old. A lot of innovations can happen in five years, and kids need to be learning the latest information in this fast moving world!
I'm going to be boring and talk about math for a minute. LOL
I used Miquon with my son last year for kindergarten. I was a bit skeptical, but he already met all the kindy math objectives so I figured it might be a fun, creative way to reinforce basic concepts. While we were doing it I didn't feel like we were making much progress, but I've been shocked this summer by how good he is at mathematical reasoning. He can reason his way through pretty complicated multiplication problems. He's a pretty smart kid, so I'm sure that's part of it, but I do think Miquon is on to something when it says it teaches kids to "think mathematically."
However, I'm not sure how long we'll be homeschooling for, and I do want him to have a grasp of more traditional ways of doing math for if/when he's in a traditional classroom, so this year we're doing Math Mammoth along with Miquon. It's like Singapore math, but designed for US homeschools.
I'm probably going to end up spending a lot on books overall (although Miquon and Math Mammoth are both very affordable), though. I have a bunch of books in my Amazon cart; I'll have to head over to half.com and see if I can get them for less.
As a taxpayer, I think it's a joke that kids somehow learn better when you don't call them nouns, verbs and adjectives anymore.
Science books I can see keeping up to date. History textbooks are almost universally all garbage. They just replace old garbage with new garbage. I remember my 5th grade textbook having two pages covering the entire American Revolution.
Keep in mind that if your local university offers teaching as a major, then they will have a teacher resource room in their library. You may be able to go in and browse textbooks from many different companies before you purchase to make sure getting what you want. They will have student editions and teacher editions from kindergarten and up (including workbooks). You may also be able to check materials out for use. I'm saying "may" because the university library may be for student use only. Ours is available for public use so it's worth checking out.
Happy teaching, everyone!
At the college level, having up-to-date textbooks is definitely a bonus. However, as a student and as a tutor, I did get very frustrated when a good but old textbook was replaced with something flashy and new... and practically useless at helping students understand basic concepts.
At the elementary, junior, and high school levels, I also confess myself a bit confused on why textbooks "need" to be updated every 5 years. I'm pretty sure Romeo and Juliet, the multiplication tables, algebra, and basic chemistry haven't changed in at least 100 years. If a book is doing a good job of providing the material, then it's up to the teacher to supplement with more modern examples or material to help grab the students' interest.
I love half.com too, but my first stop is paperbackswap.com. If you find what you are looking for there, the person giving away (yes, I said giving away) the book pays for shipping. If someone requests a book you are giving away, you pay shipping. Very frugal!
I agree...but I use Bookmooch.com instead of paperback swap. Bookmooch has been wonderful for finding free books! Love it!! But if you're in a hurry and have a deadline...half.com is a great alternative. I encourage anyone who loves books to sign up with bookmooch though... 🙂
Kristin,
Do you have a local Half-Price Bookstore? We have them here in the midwest, and each summer my kids join the summer reading program and earn a $3 "gift card" each week. I have four kids, and we go in and find lots (and I do mean lots!) of classic titles and Sonlight curriculum favorites on the clearance rack for $1 each. We very typically leave with 12 very good books for free each week. This rounded out my "living books" library to the tune of about 80 free books this summer. Woo-hoo! Among the "best finds?" Stuart Little, The Hundred Dresses, The Golden Goblet, The Saturdays, All-of-a-Kind Family, Heidi, Treasure Island. I'm fussy about my books and insist on good-looking, unmarked copies and unabridged versions. It was fun to feel that I was on a treasure hunt for books each week, and to discover books for "free" that I had planned to buy online for at least $5.95 or more. 🙂 Yea for cheap books!
That same bookstore also houses a small homeschooling resource section near the education collection, and I've found many popular homeschooling resource books for less than half-price there, as well. Fun!
Oh, neat. I don't think we have those here, unfortunately.
Have you tried PaperBackSwap, Kristin? I don't think it's a site you could use too close to the school year, but if you have books you want to get rid of that someone needs you get credit to request books others are getting rid of. I don't know if they even have textbooks, but it's worth a shot.
I haven't tried them yet, as I thought they didn't have textbooks. I'll take a peek, though!
I just used half.com for the first time to buy some books we discovered through our library. Can't wait to get them in the mail! Thanks for the tip about half.com - I think I knew about that site in college but hadn't looked at it again since graduation 6 (!) years ago.
i homeschooled for 2 years, and would buy what i could off of ebay and at half price books. whatever i couldn't find used went into a large order from rainbow resource.
now that i am not homeschooling anymore, i would like to sell the books i have (some science, singapore math, story of the world activity books). do you have any suggestions for that? do you think it's too late for this school year to put them up on half.com?
At the university level, our professors always list the mose recent edition on the booklist. However, we can usually get by with a previous edition at a cheaper price. I believe university level books are updated frequently b/c the market is smaller for the publishers and authors, so they need to recoup $$. I would assume for public school students and homeschoolers, textbooks may be updated for similar reasons. Or to become more politically correct. Or to change with the new state standards or whatever. I love half.com for selling and buying. Other ideas on here are great. I love books, and love getting them for bargains.
Hello! I thought I'd put in a plug for bookfinder.com- it searches several sites for books and shows them with shipping included so you can compare prices. It searches half.com, abebooks.com, alibris.com, bibilo.com and others. I find it a great resource for finding the books we need for our literature based curriculum.
I just wanted to mention a website that we just started using..Its call paperbackswap. Check it out..I love it!
I know this is a bit late, but I am a college student and have been buying my books used for almost four years now. I would definitely recommend checking out bigwords.com. It is a search engine of all the websites (amazon, half, abe, etc.), but what's really cool is that you can make a list of all the books you need and it will tell you the groupings to buy at each bookseller. Each semester I used to spend three or four hours searching for the best prices, now it takes me twenty minutes to plug in the ISBN and I get an even better price. It also does the same thing to find the best price for you to sell back your books, if you want to do that. Anyway, thanks for all your great posts. I've been reading your blog for the last couple weeks and I think it's just great!
Hi! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any trouble with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing several weeks of hard work due to no backup. Do you have any methods to stop hackers?
I was wondering if you might be willing to break down those costs, per child. I only have one, (he's 9, in the 3rd grade) and I've often considered homeschooling, and now he is starting to express interest. But we have to get to a point where he will do the work without me sitting on him and dragging it out of him first. I wondered how much it cost for the books for your child that is close to him in age. Thank you so much for all this information!
It's so, so hard to put a number on it, because it all depends what curriculum you use and where you buy it. I'd say that I can buy curriculum for my 4th grader for around $100, as long as I can get a fair amount of it used.
In 4th grade, a lot of the curriculum is not consumable, which means that it's a lot easier to find on the used market, and you can save a lot of money that way!