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 like buying used books or renting textbooks (of course, with the discontinuation of Amazon rent textbooks program, many students will have to adapt and look for other rental alternatives).