Selection
It doesn't matter how low a store's prices are, if the textbooks you need aren't in stock it isn't going to do you a lick of good. These two stores didn't just offer a great selection, but they actually seem to have most of the books in stock.

• 1st Place: eCampus came in first place. When we searched eCampus for the same ten textbooks, we found eight of them to be in stock.  We also found eCampus to have a wide variety of school related items available, ranging from medical supplies to art and office supplies.

• 2nd place: Bookbyte came in second place for selection due to the fact that when we searched for ten random textbooks, it had nine of the ten we searched for in stock and ready to ship.

Prices
Price is probably just as important as selection, especially considering the budget of the average college student. These two websites offered the lowest pricing on the textbooks we searched for.

• 1st place: Bookbyte came in first due to the fact that they were consistently 10 to 20 percent cheaper than the competition and one of the books we priced was actually less than half of what the competitors were charging.

• 2nd place: TextBooks came in second. While the savings at this website weren't as dramatic as the savings at Bookbyte, the prices were generally a few dollars less than what most of the competitors were charging.

Buyback Prices
Most students don't keep their textbooks forever and being able to sell your textbooks once you’re done with them is definitely an advantage. These two websites offered the best buyback prices.

• 1st place: Of the ten textbooks we researched, eCampus routinely offered 5 to 10 percent more than what the competition was offering.

• 2nd place: While TextBooks did not offer as much for used textbooks as eCampus was offering, they did come in a close second.

Customer Support
Customer support is important when it comes to any online purchase. These two websites had support that stood out from the rest.

• 1st place: TextBooks is in first place when it comes to customer service. Not only was our email question answered politely and thoroughly, it was answered in less than an hour. That's quite an impressive turnaround time.

• 2nd place: eCampus came in second because, like TextBooks, their response to our questions was prompt, courteous and knowledgeable. While they did not respond within one hour like TextBooks did, they did respond the same business day.

In Closing
While some don't think of textbooks as a necessity of life, they are indeed something that no college student can live without. That doesn't, however, mean that students should have to pay an arm and a leg for the textbooks they need. Read through the following reviews to see which online textbook marketplace offers the hottest deals and best suits your personal needs.