It's back to class for many area colleges this week and that has students shelling out big bucks for books. FOX17's Stacy Case is saving you money on this college staple with ways to cut costs 40-80%. When it comes to your book budget, it pays to read the fine print.

"So, that's our class," says Vanderbilt student Jeriel Johnson. "My calculus book - this is $200."

$200 for one book? Not uncommon on campus. The average student spends $600.

"I'm prepared for about $800," says Johnson.

Buying a digital textbook is by far the cheapest option - up to 60% cheaper than the hard cover, and with the program Cafescribe, available at many midstate university bookstores, you don't need to buy an e-reader to get in on the savings.

"All a student needs to do is go to cafescribe.com, create an account and they can start shopping for books they may have," says Vanderbilt Book Store Manager Heath Warren. "Here's an example of a book here "The Good Life", that all of our first year students are reading on campus. They can go to any pate they're looking at, say page 55, that takes them here. They can enlarge the print. They can highlight the text in here, click the icon, find the text they'd like to highlight and they can take a note on the info."

While e-books are catching on, they're not yet as popular as renting the book. For the first time, renting a book has surpassed sales of used books at Vanderbilt Book Store. In fact, with renting a textbook, you pay about 1/2 the cost of buying a book new. For example, one book is $109 new, $54 to rent. Then you just return it at the end of the semester. Last year the Vandy students saved almost $500,000 by renting their textbooks instead of buying them. Still, other students, like Felicia Zhuang, have found savings outside the bookstore.

"So, if someone is going to graduate, then I ask them if they're willing to sell their books to me so I just buy it off other students instead," says Zhuang.

Bottom line? If you're paying full price for books, you may not be doing your money saving homework. Of course buying used is also an option for about 25% off the original price.Textbooks