By Yensy Lopez, Junior Reporter
As the new semester begins, and we are rolling back into new classes, experiences, and new knowledge, things can get quite expensive, especially for us students. As a broke university student, I try my best to find the cheapest possible ways to get my textbooks, and I will be sharing a few of my favourites.
Thriftbooks.com is an online retailer that sells new and used books. They specialize in affordability, and have multiple quality selections depending on availability. Having ordered in the past, the delivery took around one to two weeks, and everything was in great condition. They also offer free shipping to Canada for orders over $15 USD. The downside is the availability; stock may run out fast, so make sure to look for your books/textbooks within a reasonable time.
Other websites you could try are eBay and Facebook Marketplace. There are always past students who are selling used books for reasonable prices. I would recommend joining textbook-selling groups, and just make sure you are constantly browsing. Other websites you could try, but have not used myself, are; Book Outlet, Better World Books, and AbeBooks.
You may also have luck browsing local thrift stores, such as Value Village, Super Thrift, Nearly New Shop, and Brandon MCC Thrift.
Now I want to share some free websites where you can find textbooks, which is the highlight, because sometimes things are tight, and we just can’t justify spending a large amount of money on textbooks. The first thing I do when I receive my syllabus is look for the textbooks on a search engine, type “free pdf”, and move on from there. Sometimes, you may find them fast. If there is no luck, here are a few websites you can try: Z-library, Libgen, Google Scholar, and YakiBooki. Anna’s Archive is another excellent website from what I have found, but the downside is that paying members get significantly faster downloads and a smoother experience. You can still download books for free, and it has a large selection of almost everything you are looking for.
Another great online resource is the Internet Archive, where you can find textbooks, books, movies, etc. I personally have used it to download some books, and it worked great. And as far as I know, it is perfectly safe, but I have not downloaded textbooks.
Finally, I want to share my favourite website, which is OceanofPDF. I have found almost all my required textbooks for this semester here, except one. This is my favourite option because you don’t need to create an account and is completely free, it is fast and reliable, and it is extremely easy to navigate. I use it mainly on my iPad and have never encountered any ads or anything suspicious, and it is super-fast.
I hope this information is useful to you, and wish you the best for the upcoming semester! Always make sure to check online before any purchases and confirm with the professors whether it is necessary to have the textbook. Good luck!