I came across a cool college textbook saving trick today that I thought I’d let you college students know that are worried about saving money.  Here are the steps on how you do it –

Step 1 – The first thing you’re going to want to do is grab the ISBN number.  You can either look it up online or simply go into your college bookstore and take a picture with your cellphone.  For those that don’t know what an ISBN number is, it’s the number on the back of the book, it’s the barcode that the cashier will scan.  Here’s an example of one:

Step 2 – Once you have the ISBN number, you’re going to want to go to pricegrabber.com.  This is a great website where you can compare college textbook prices.  Not only can you compare textbook prices, this is also a great site to compare just about anything you can buy.

Step 3 – Place the ISBN number into PriceGrabber.  Once you place the number, you’re going to get a results page with the cheapest place to buy it from.

Here’s an example I used.  I picked out a marketing book titled, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”, with the ISBN number 9780470113455.  When I placed this into PriceGrabber, the prices ranged from $18 – $23.  The college in my area was selling this same book for $30!.  Imagine how much you can save with a $150 textbook?

Step 4 – If you don’t like prices you see on PriceGrabber, simply go to Google.com and place the ISBN only in the search.  Here, you’ll get a big list of stores that carry the books.  You won’t get a side by side price comparison but you’ll be able to shop other retailers.

When you’re looking to save on your textbooks, this is another way to save.  As long as you have the ISBN, there’s no reason you can’t save more than 25%.