Renting, Buying, and Selling Books
Textbooks can be costly, especially for adult students bearing their entire cost of living.  Thankfully, there are many options to obtain the books you need for class. Some teachers do not require that your textbooks be the latest editions (it’s always a good idea to ask). If this is the case, looking at a used bookstore, such as, Half Price Books can save you a ton of money. Purchasing a book at full price is never a good idea unless it is a book that you will be using again as a reference once your class is finished. If you must have the latest edition of the book and it is quite expensive, renting a textbook is the way to go.

Amazon.com
The price to rent a textbook can be up to 75% cheaper than buying. Amazon ships it to you and provides you with return shipping. The due date is not until at least 2 weeks after the end of the semester, giving students extra time to get their book back without additional fees.

Amazon also offers heavily discounted used books via independent sellers, especially for older editions. Many textbooks are also available in Kindle format.

You can also sell your textbooks through Amazon; they offer you a price and provide you with a shipping label. A credit is added to your account when the book is accepted by Amazon.

Amazon also provides a free service called Amazon Student, offering discounted shipping and products and referral credits with a student email address.

Abebooks.com
Abebooks offers a wide selection of used textbooks, often at a cheaper price than Amazon. However, shipping is generally slower.

Textbookrentals.com
This site allows you to compare multiple book rentals sites to find the best price on the textbook you need.

Computer Software and Hardware

The Microsoft Office suite, whose format is used for most classes, is available for free download at Microsoft’s website with a student email, here.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud software is 60% with a student email.  This software discount gets you Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, and more. Check out the link for details.

Apple is also into offering student discount for their products. St. Edward’s is listed in the database of colleges that receive discounted prices.  Offered discounts are $200 for some Macs and $20 for iPads. Some of these discounts also apply to high school students, so if you have children of that age, they can benefit as well.

The St. Edward’s University Student Life department lists several discounts and studentrate.com offers a list of local student discounts.