College texts can be an expensive proposition.  The old-school method is to walk into the college bookstore with a list of your semester's courses and spend anywhere from $300 to $500 for texts. 

You may find a group that hosts a used book sale on campus. Those work fine, but there never seem to be enough used copies to meet demand.  And if your professor changes to a different title or a newer edition, you may be out of luck.

There are options:

• Some college bookstores now offer rentals as well as used texts.  
• Online used book sellers can save you money, but you need to figure at least a few days for shipping/handling.  There are many -- a few are AbeBooks.com, Alibris.com, Amazon.com, Bookbyte.com, CampusBooks.com, eCampus.com, UsedCollegeTextbooks.com.  You might want to use the price-comparison tools in Google, Yahoo and Bing, or sites like http://bookscouter.com/ or http://www.bookfinder.com/ which compare sale prices for both new and used, rentals, and shipping charges.
• Online textbook rental companies such as Bookrenter.com, CampusBookRentals.com, Chegg.com, CollegeBookRenter.com, eCampus.com and TextBookRentals.com may save you money.   (Read an article HERE. ) 
• E-books (both for sale and rent) are a growing option.  Not everyone is comfortable with the format, and there may be hardware issues.  If you're interested,  you might want to read the short article HERE.  See also the "E-book Basics" page of this wiki.

Although borrowing a book from a library sounds like a great idea, there's no guarantee you can keep a book for a full semester.  Have a back-up plan if you can't renew, or you may wind up without a text in mid-semester.  And watch out for overdue fines!