It's bad enough to pay thousands of dollars a year to send a child to college. But there's more: Many students and parents don't realize how much they'll also have to spend on textbooks.

The cost of textbooks has soared in recent years, and many campuses now estimate that students will spend upward of $1,500 annually on course materials, according to the College Board.

The expense is likely to hit particularly hard those attending low-cost community colleges, where the collective cost of textbooks often exceeds tuition. At Pasadena City College in Pasadena, Calif., for example, annual tuition and fees run $652, but the estimated cost for books and supplies is $1,638.

"The textbook market is broken," said Nicole Allen, textbooks advocate for the Student Public Interest Research Group in Boston. "The fundamental problem is that professors assign the books, often without any knowledge about pricing, and then the ultimate customers of the books have little choice about whether they should buy them."

That said, there is a vast array of textbook-buying options that can dramatically cut the cost. But taking advantage of these options takes time and requires organizational skills -- and even at cut rates, buying schoolbooks still isn't cheap.

"You can save hundreds of dollars every semester," Allen said. "The key is to shop around."

How can you cut your book costs?

Start with your instructors, Allen suggested. If they've already issued book lists, get the so-called ISBN numbers for each book. (These are like Social Security numbers for books, which allow you to make apples-to-apples comparisons while shopping.) Also find out whether the text can be purchased in soft cover or whether you can buy a previous edition.

Although some older editions are too outdated to use, others are nearly identical to the current editions even though some pages may have been moved or updated, Allen said.

If your instructor has been using the same book for some time, he or she may be able to advise you about whether the changes are significant. If the changes aren't earth-shattering, you can buy an older edition and borrow a book from a well-heeled friend when necessary or study with that person.

How much can that save? If you were to buy the 2008 edition of "Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry," you would probably pay the $216 retail price at your campus bookstore. But if you could get by with the 2004 edition, you could nab a copy for less than $20 at online retailer Half.com.

If the new edition is too different from the old one to make this a viable option, find out whether there's a paperback. The biochemistry tome's 2008 hardback edition sells for $193.63 at Amazon.com, but the soft cover version retails for less than $60.

No dice? Your next step would be to determine whether you intend to keep the book or sell it at the end of the semester. If you don't plan on saving your books, renting might be a good financial move. Continued...