With the start of school mere weeks away, college students are scrambling to get their things in order (maybe). Textbooks are likely chief among items on a student’s to-do list. And as any college student (or parent) knows, buying textbooks is expensive business. Enter Amazon Student. Amazon’s latest mobile app for the iPhone/iPad reminds me of the smart phone’s endless potential to improve people’s lives. This free app gives the user the ability to compare textbook prices at the local college bookstore with those on Amazon, the latter likely being much cheaper. Here’s a brief run down on the Amazon Student’s key features:

Scan Textbook

Once you’ve downloaded the application, simply use your iPhone or iPad camera to scan a relevant textbook and review it information. Amazon Student will show you the list price to compare against Amazon’s price so you can tell exactly how much a bookstore marks up the price of a textbook. The app also tells you a textbook’s estimated resale value, so you know ahead of time whether or not you can get cash back from selling it later on. Quick price comparisons can be a godsend to students on strict budgets. With Amazon Student, you can go from bookstore to bookstore comparing prices, so you know exactly which places have the most affordable prices on textbooks.

Trade in old books for credit on Amazon.com

If you shop a bookstore with notoriously low buyback prices, you can use Amazon Student to sell your old textbooks back to Amazon.com. Just scan an old textbook and the app will determine whether or not it has any resale value. If so, the app give you an approximate value for the textbook and you can opt to ship it to Amazon.com (with free shipping) and Amazon will send a gift card for the resale price. Keep in mind that the values for your books are approximated. Unfortunately, just because the app tells you the potential resale price of a textbook, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Amazon will buy the book for that price.

Free Two-Day Shipping

Probably the best incentive to shop for textbooks with Amazon Student is their free two day shipping offer. For the first six months after you download the app, any textbooks you purchase will be shipped to your address in two days, just as if you had an Amazon Prime account. So it’s entirely possible to order the entirety of the textbooks requested on your syllabus from you smart phone in a matter of minutes and receive those books two days later, all without having to enter a bookstore. Aren’t you glad to be a part of the smart phone generation?

About the author: Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

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