Good buys on text-books

I'm currently a student, and text-books are one of my major sources of anxiety at the start of every semester. My loans cover my the cost of tuition, but books need to be budgeted from personal money and that's tough, because as a student things are tight.

I prefer to buy my books on line, 9 times out of 10 I can find a deal better than what the bookstore is offering. Here are a few tips to get the best deal on your texts.

1. Get a copy of the required reading before the semester starts. As an undergrad I often found myself cornered into purchasing the books from the book store because the semester had already started, and I needed my books ASAP.
2. If you can't get the book list in advance don't worry. Most schools keep copies of all required reading in the library, you can usually check out the books you need, and hold onto them as long as your responsible and remember to renew (fines on rental books stink). This is also a great way to determine is this a book you want to keep for the future, or one you'll never look at again after the semester ends?
3. Buy used and sell back to the school (if they have such a program) if you don't want to keep the books. You can also sell your books online through sites like Amazon if you really don't want to hang on to the text.

Below are links to my favorite searches for cheap texts:

BookFinder - great site includes coupon codes so you get the best savings possible I always go here first, but look everywhere before making my purchase.

BookHQ - not bad the search function is a little rudimentary I usually take the ISBN from BookFinder and plug it in. This way I'm sure I get the right text. If the author has an uncommon name you can use tha as your sear parameter, and select from a list of titles.

http://www.alibris.com/ - great for rare and out of print books.

Abebooks - I've read mixed reviews about Abebooks. I've never had a problem with them, and have found some books really cheap there.