Downloadable Textbooks are Cheap College Textbooks

The only difference is that they will not experience the same wear and tear that physical books do. Your textbooks will stay as new as the day you bought them.

And, you can not only highlight and make notes in the texts (just as with a printed book) but you can copy and paste, do a word search, or print out any parts of them you want.

Where to Download College Textbooks Online

Why CourseSmart? Because they have over 90% of the course materials used in colleges today, available on their site. So the chances are much better that you will find what you need there, rather than anywhere else.

CourseSmart is able to offer such a large inventory, because they directly partner with the largest college textbook publishers. Unlike other companies who offer digital books, course materials make up the bulk of the books they sell.

How does it work?

Once you decide to purchase a downloadable textbook, instead of the "buy and read textbooks online" version (which they also offer) you purchase the book, download and install (for free) the reader software, then download the book you bought. Whenever you want to read it, just open the application and select the book.

What else do I need to know?

• You do not actually buy the textbooks. The discounted price you pay is actually just to have the book available, conveniently on your computer, for a period of time. Depending on the book, you have 180, 360 or 540 days. (You do not get to choose the length, but you can always renew for longer.) So it's similar to what happens when you rent textbooks, except that you don't have to worry about damages.
• Downloadable textbooks can only be downloaded to one computer and they cannot be transferred to another one because of the proprietary software that's needed to use them. If your computer dies, you will have to contact their support (live chat or phone) and see what they can do for you.
• It is possible to switch formats (from downloadable to online) if you have a good reason such as technical difficulty. You would contact support in that case- otherwise you have to stick with the method you chose at purchase. The price and formatting of the text is exactly the same.
• There are no refunds and you would not sell used textbooks back.

If you wish to keep your books forever though, there is another convenient way to buy really cheap college textbooks for downloading.

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