Textbook Deals Scarce, Not Worth the Waiting

Textbooks aren’t cheap. So when my friend Franchi started medical school last week, I offered to find her the best deals online.

Too bad there weren’t any.

Several Web sites claim to offer new and used textbooks for less than university bookstores. Although most sell them for a few dollars less than list price, shipping charges negate any major savings.

Even if you do save a couple of bucks, it might not be worth the time you have to wait. None of the sites could guarantee when the textbooks would ship. Advertised times ranged from “usually” 24 hours to several weeks.

Most of these issues were moot, however, since not one of the seven sites I used offered all of the 12 books Franchi needed. The online merchant her medical school linked to, at https://www.medbooksdirect.com, offered 11.

Perhaps if we had been looking for more general-interest textbooks--instead of titles such as “Atlas of Functional Histology”--our search would have been more successful. But even those sites that had the books could not deliver them in time for Franchi’s second week of school. When you have anatomy homework to do, “usually ships in 24 hours” simply isn’t good enough.

VarsityBooks.com (https://www.varsitybooks.com) advertises that orders leave the warehouse within one business day. The site, however, listed only two of the 12 books in stock. It offered to e-mail me when the other books became available, but I didn’t have time to wait.

Boasting its own medical textbook store, Efollett.com (https://www.efollet.com) appeared to be more promising. I found listings for 10 of the books (including one erroneously advertised for $995), but the site did not note whether it actually had any copies available.

Books designated for immediate shipment are mailed the same day if ordered before 2 p.m. Central time, according to the site. But I couldn’t tell whether the books were designated for immediate shipment--or any other shipment, for that matter. Because the site did not note specific shipping times for individual books, I decided to move on.

Ecampus.com (https://www.ecampus.com) included shipping times for each book, but these varied considerably: some orders would leave the warehouse “immediately,” but others would take seven to 10 business days.

Although the site boasts used books, it did not offer any for the titles Franchi needed. Only new textbooks were available. Add on standard UPS shipping cost--a $2.99 flat fee plus 99 cents per item--and she would be paying almost as much as she would at the university bookstore.

Hoping to save Franchi a few dollars, I stopped by Bookswap.com (https://www.bookswap.com) to find used textbooks. There, students post classified ads for textbooks they want to sell. Those interested in buying can search the listings from their university or others in the area.

The site does not facilitate the transaction, however. A student must e-mail the seller to arrange a method of purchasing the book.

Although Bookswap.com included 24 postings from students at Franchi’s university, none were for the medical textbooks she needed. I searched advertisements from a few other local universities but didn’t find much besides random Spanish textbooks and American literature classics.

Some of the major online booksellers offered slightly better deals, though even they were not ideal.

Amazon (https://www.amazon.com) boasted eight used books. And although Barnes & Noble (https://www.barnesandnoble.com) had only two used books, it offered free shipping for orders of two or more books. Shipping times ranged from 24 hours to more than a week.

As a last resort, I stopped by the online merchant Franchi’s medical school links to.

The site, at https://www.medbooksdirect.com, (which takes you to https://www.majors.com), stocked all the books she needed but one. For each textbook, the site noted how many copies were available and from which location it would be shipped. But with warehouses in Dallas and Atlanta, the site advertised average delivery times of five to seven business days.

With homework already piling up, Franchi couldn’t wait another week--or more--for the books to arrive. She bought them from the university bookstore last week.

I just saw the receipt: nearly $350, and that was for only half of them. Textbooks aren’t cheap.

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Times staff writer Christine Frey covers personal technology.