The Eight Best Sources for Cheap College Textbooks

When David Miller founded textbook startup SlugBooks in 2008, most of its 500 customers were students at the University of California Santa Cruz, from which he'd just graduated (the company got its name from a beloved bookstore near campus that shut down). Today, SlugBooks is used by bargain-seeking students far beyond his alma mater's campus: Last winter the site had 700,000 visitors.

Price tags on college textbooks continue to shoot up, but more students are doing their homework before setting foot in the college bookstore. The National Association of College Stores reported that 82 percent of college students research textbook prices online before buying them. As a result, price comparison tools like SlugBooks are becoming more popular, as are sites that rent textbooks or sell them used.