As college students, we’re short on money. But unlike most colleges students, we get screwed over by the quarter system: While your friends only buy textbooks twice a year, we buy them three times. Many of us have felt dread in the pits of our stomachs at the Norris cash register upon paying hundreds of dollars for books — some of which we’ll barely read, and some of which we’ll never even open.

You tell yourself you’ll sell them back, but are you getting a good deal? Prices differ greatly between the three most popular textbook emporiums at Northwestern: Norris, Beck’s and Amazon.com. It’s easy to always go to the same place, but you can save yourself serious cash by being smart about where you buy and sell your books.

If you really want to save, look into selling back your books over that vast series of tubes we call the Internet. While buying and selling your books online is potentially unreliable and inconvenient, what with shipping costs (although Amazon actually has free shipping for orders over $25), it is potentially far more profitable. It’s easy to make safe purchases by checking buyer and seller consumer ratings, and you don’t have to go through the hassle of selling the books yourself, says Weinberg freshman Anil Wadhwani, who sells textbooks for students. While Wadhwani admits that Amazon is a great resource, he says it doesn’t always give you the best deals.

“It’s better to find friends who are taking classes you took and sell your books to them,” he says. “That way, you know that you can trust your buyer, and you don’t have to deal with shipping costs. It’s a better deal all around.”

To get a better picture, we chose four popular classes — Intro to Psychology, Modern Cosmology, Organic Chemistry and Intro to Macroeconomics — and compared the textbook prices at Norris, Beck’s and Amazon. (Note that used-book prices at Amazon fluctuate.)

Some trends emerge. For these books, at least, Norris never offers the best deal, while Amazon’s used books can prove to be a bargain.