8 Textbook Apps for Soon-To-Be College Students

Any student going to college needs an arsenal of textbook apps to help them shop for the best bargains, find the free ebooks and textbooks, and sell and trade books when the semester ends. These apps should fit the ticket. But don’t wait until the fall of freshman year to download them. There’s no time like the present to create a folder and start adding these nine textbook apps to your mobile devices.

1. BigWords

Nobody likes shopping for textbooks at the college bookstore. BigWords operates by the premise that students prefer to “shop for textbooks on smaller and smaller computers in the palms of their hands” and like to shop using their smartphone or tablets. They claim to help students about $1,000 annually on average.

2. Chegg

Chegg brings you millions of textbooks and solutions packed into one glorious app! Rent textbooks, get instant access (when available), and read eTextbooks on your iPhone, iPad or iPod and Android devices. The app allows students to easily search for textbooks by title, author, ISBN or by scanning a barcode. Rent or buy physical textbooks, and while the book is on the way get 7-day FREE instant access to the eTextbook to get started on classwork immediately.

3. BuyBackTextbooks

This app makes selling back your old books & textbooks both fun & profitable. How it works is this; simply install the app and then grab some books you want to sell. With the app you can easily scan the barcode on the back on the book and once it beeps their system goes to work. In a matter of seconds you'll see how much each store will pay for the book.

4. Sell Back Your Book

Get an instant quote on the price for your book and print out your label, shipping it directly to their warehouse. You can be paid via Paypal or receive a check. All you need is your book's ISBN to get started.

5. Half.com

eBay’s app helps students quickly find great deals on textbooks (and more fun stuff of course) heading into the school year. It’s the second eBay app to integrate barcode scanning technology and allows users to scan the barcodes on items to find the best deals on textbooks, DVDs, video games and more. The app provides Half.com buyers access to over 80 million active listings from more than 700,000 sellers. Half.com also uses the “Buying Wizard”. Based on the user’s criteria for item condition and seller feedback, the Buying Wizard identifies the lowest cost items and shipping discounts (if applicable) to help shoppers get the best deals on Half.com.

6. CampusBooks

With the free CampusBooks apps, everything you love about CampusBooks.com's powerful money-saving search engine and price-comparison tool is now with you on the go! Wherever you are, you're just a few touches away from finding the best deals when buying and selling textbooks. The app finds the cheapest books when buying, gets the highest prices when selling, has in-app barcode scanning, and uses GPS tracking technology to display local results.

7. Yuzu

Yuzu™ by Barnes & Noble lets you organize, read, and annotate your textbooks right in the palm of your hand—making the experience of learning simple, gratifying, and much easier on your back. Go to the Yuzu store to find your textbooks and download them to your iPad®. You can also access them using an internet-connected Mac or Windows PC. That way, you’ll be able to follow along in class on your iPad and pick up where you left off on your home computer or even in the campus computer lab.

8. eCampus

eCampus has saved students over $100 Million while continuing to adapt to students' preferences. They work hard to provide students with the best values in textbooks, and since 2009, textbook rentals have been their most popular offering. At eCampus.com their mission is to save college students money on the textbooks they need, which is exactly why they began the eWards loyalty program. Whether you're looking to rent or buy textbooks, download an etextbook, sell used textbooks or purchase college clothing, you get rewards.

With college costs rising, these great textbook apps should help students save money and ease the burden of added costs on top of tuition.