The high cost of college textbooks remains one of the major student problems and a significant expense alongside tuition and accommodation. With prices of some new textbook copies reaching several hundred dollars, not every student is capable of affording them.

Today, we’ve decided to look closer at how the textbook industry works and try to understand why textbook costs are so high and how they influence student life and decisions. And, more importantly, we wanted to show how to leverage more affordable options. To do so, we’ve gone through a great deal of data: student initiatives’ reports, educational organizations’ reports, and official statistics from federal and state websites, etc.