Looking for cheap textbooks without the wait?

Web sites cut book-buying hassle, prices. Web sites such as Amazon.com and Half.com offer cheaper textbook prices than local vendors and can be shipped quickly. The price of textbooks online appears to be far cheaper than the price of books purchased at Eastern Michigan's local bookstores. When compared, 18 out of 20 books for general education courses were at least 10 dollars cheaper when purchased on the Internet. Books found at Amazon.com or Half.com can be delivered to students' doorsteps and, in some cases, may save them more than 50% on their book purchases. For the past two weeks, the line outside of Mike's Book Store has stretched out of the door and down the block. Even maneuvering through the aisles of Ned's Bookstore can be an athletic feat. Thousands of EMU students crowd these stores every semester just to get their books. "I went to Mike's," said Monica Blossom, a sophomore from Canton. "I waited outside for a long time. I only got one book there, and it cost me $64 for a used book." Buying a book from either Amazon or Half.com does not require any time spent in lines. Potential buyers need only search their books out using a simple search engine provided at the sites. After that, a brief registration is required. The buyer must identify his or her name, email address, phone number, place of residence and billing/shipping address. When buying used books on these Web sites, student are often purchasing from other individuals with accounts on the sites. All sellers are rated based on how quickly they ship their products and in what condition they arrive. This makes it easier for potential buyers to decide whether to purchase their books from certain sellers. Luckily, both Amazon and Half.com yielded several sellers for each of the books on the list of 20 common general education texts. After filling out the proper fields, only a credit card number is required to have any textbook delivered to the home or office. Some form of express shipping is available at both Web sites. For only a few extra dollars, buyers can have textbooks at their doorsteps by the end of any business week. "I bought 'Looking Out, Looking In' for my communications class," Blossom said. With a small wait as her only holdup, Blossom's book could have cost only $41. With the additional cost of two- to five-day shipping, her book could have been $45 shipped to her door. This is a saving of $19 compared to what she paid at Mike's Book Store. Many of the savings found online are far greater than those that Blossom passed up. For example, the book "Technologies and Society" by Ron Westrum, an EMU professor, costs $29 for a used copy at Ned's but only $4.98 on Amazon.com. Other savings are similar: "Working With Words" is about $20 at local bookstores versus $11.40 online, "Government by the People" is $41 dollars at stores but between $5 and $12 online and "To Engineer is Human" is about $10 at stores versus $6 at Amazon.com. Blossom said that had she known about the savings, she would not hesitate to purchase her books online.

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