Back to School: Save on Textbooks

University and college courses are notorious for requiring expensive text books. While some of these costs cannot be avoided, there are other options. Lifehacker offers a few options (including, amazingly, digitizing a whole book which is usually not worthwhile when you consider the time it takes and is currently still illegal), some of which are important to consider.

The Lifehacker article boils it down to "buy new, buy used, rent, or copy" -- I would add "share or ignore" too.
Buy new -- sometimes you just need to pay the $100 for the newest edition as requested. For classes where information changes over time -- like Computer Science or Economics -- this is often the only choice.
Buy used -- if the same edition has been used in previous years, check the campus bookstore, used bookstores (like SubText at UVic) or online for a cheaper copy.
Rent -- I don't know of any text book renters in Canada yet.
Copy -- this is sketchy at best. However, if you really only need to reference one chapter, consider borrowing the book (from a fellow student or from the Library if it is available) but be sure to follow the Access Copyright guidelines.
Share -- while it took me until 4th year to figure it out, I did take some courses with friends where we agreed to each buy some of the books and then share them around -- this works well for literature courses where a reading list may be extensive, not so well for a course with a single text.
Ignore -- again, it took me a while to figure this one out, but if you ask your professors, many will admit you do not need to have a particular book (recommended reading versus required) or that a different copy or edition will be sufficient (for example, I took a course on Robert Louis Stevenson and was able to buy very inexpensive used copies of most of the books rather than the academic printings).