Low Cost Textbook Alternatives

GTCC Campus stores work hard to keep college course materials affordable for our students.  We are owned and operated by GTCC and are not operated by a 3rd party, for-profit company.  Our mission is to support students and faculty on campus and offer low cost options for your course materials. 

There are many changes in publishing and course materials that are helping to make textbooks more affordable and opening up many new low-cost possibilities as well as catering to different learning styles. The GTCC Campus Stores are always on the lookout for these options and advising our Faculty on how to offer lower price alternatives for our students.  Some recent partner vendors that we and GTCC Faculty are working with are….http://openstaxcollege.org/ ,  http://www.xanedu.com/, https://www.vitalsource.com/ and more!  GTCC Campus Stores have a Bookstore Advisory Committee that meets 3-4 times each year to share new developments and changes in the industry which can benefit our students and faculty teaching.  

Here are a list of the many options available to  GTCC faculty in the marketplace to assist in your book adoption discussions.  Unlike many colleges, GTCC allows only 1 set of ISBN's "adopted", per course, to help alleviate confusion amongst different sections of  the same course.  This ensures students are ready to go on the first day of classes.  Now, those ISBN"s can be carried in multiple formats if the Dept. agrees, which helps with student affordability.  

  •  Publisher Digital Standalone Access Cards: In many cases we offer or can order you the separate digital access code for many courses saving you up to 40% OFF on your course materials.  While not available for all courses, this has been a popular option for MAT, ECON, SPA, and many other courses.  Many include the eBook and it usually denotes this on the access card.
  • CENGAGE UNLIMITED:   Like a Cengage published title? Offer students a Cengage Unlimited subcription.  Pay one low price for all Cengage Digital Library content for a semester, a year or even 2 years.  Many students in EDU, EGR and SAB/HSE have seen the savings. Printing available too.  
  • Digital eBooks for Download:  Thru a partnership with VitalSource we offer many eBooks at a great savings to the print versions.  For more information just ask a Store Associate or go to https://www.vitalsource.com/.
  • LOOSE-LEAF BOOKS: In many cases we can offer the same hard back book as a loose leaf version for a 25% to 35% savings off the hard copy version.  We even buy most of these back at the end of the semester, especially if it is not bundled with an access code.
  • NCLive Link and picture Open Education North Carolina is an initiative that aims to reduce the cost of higher education for North Carolina students by providing free, open textbooks for 30 of the most frequently-taught courses across North Carolina’s 2 and 4-year colleges and universities. The initiative is coordinated by an OER Program Librarian employed by NC LIVE and is overseen by an OER Advisory Committee of faculty, administrators and librarians from around the state. The GTCC Campus Stores and Faculty are actively working with the LRC Staff to help coordinate this roll out of free or low cost course materials to students.  Faculty can contact the LRC for more information on how OER can be incorporated into your courses.
  • Digital Course Content Creation:  Departments can opt to create or add their own custom course materials through low cost options such as https://get.vitalsource.com/content-creation, LAD Custom Publishing , Academx or other content developers.  Most offer copyright clearances and save students 40-60% off of traditional publishing models.  Many Dept.'s use these 3 vendors listed to save students money and provide great content to meet student learning objectives.
  • USED BOOKS: We LOVE used books and sell them with most courses that do not have digital access, codes or are used as lab manuals. Most USED copies are 20-40% off the new version price.  We offer BOOK BUYBACK at Greensboro, High Point and Jamestown stores at the end of Fall and Spring terms.  We also offer ONLINE BUYBACK through a partner, MBS. We also offer in-store daily buyback through MBS. All shipping is free and you receive a check from MBS within 2 weeks of receipt of your books.  
  • COURSE PACKS: The GTCC Duplicating Center in Facilities can reproduce any content for your class.  They can create Student Course Packs  that Faculty self produce and are actually duplicated here on campus and offer a tremendous savings!  Many include the syllabus and complemental materials that the Faculty have found helpful in there courses.  DEN, PTA, AST and many other Departments use them very successfully each term and they usually cost students $4 to $15.  Be sure to check your Moodle Course site too as they usually list them there, but if you need to print it out, the in-store price is usually very competitive and will save students a ton of ink. 
  • DAY-ONE ACCESS: Starting in Fall 2018 GTCC started offering Day-One Access in Moodle. Everyone enrolled will receive free access for 10 days to the digital course materials.  During that time, just stop by your campus store, or complete an online order to purchase continued access. The digital materials are provided at the lowest price available nationwide in accordance with the Dept. of Education guidelines. Once purchased, your enrollment continues in Moodle.  You can also purchase a low cost loose leaf textbook for some courses at your campus stores and online.    

If you find others that you would like to share please forward their contact information to our staff.  Also, we have a list of current publisher contacts we can forward to any GTCC Faculty.   Thank you for helping us keep text books affordable at GTCC.