For many college students, their trip to the campus store to buy books for the spring semester will be a lot like their trip in the fall: Last-minute and expensive.

Not so for the 10 students already registered for Juniata College's spring semester class "Origins of Evil." Their odds of escaping a textbook price soaking are far better than their peers.

For one thing, their religious studies professor Donald Braxton makes a point to post the books required for his January class five months ahead so students have more time to find a cheap price on the Internet, snag a used bookstore copy or borrow from a friend.

And he's cut from five to two the number of books students must purchase by steering them to low- or no-cost digital sources and to services like Google Books, which have turned book-buying habits upside down by offering free downloads of older, out-of-copyright titles.

Make no mistake, registering and buying that early are extreme. But it shows how students able to plan ahead are finding an increasing array of alternatives, sometimes with help from professors who are tired of ever-rising book prices.

"Students are under massive financial constraints. I know. I have two kids in college myself," Dr. Braxton said of his decision two years ago to begin picking books extra early. "Technology makes it so easy that it costs me nothing to do this other than thinking a little bit ahead."

For generations, the highly monopolized campus textbook business gave its captive audience two choices: New or used.

But these days, students can weigh the merits of print versus digital, buying versus renting and whether international editions meant for overseas classrooms -- as much as 90 percent cheaper when purchased used -- are worth the risk that the text and graphics might be different.

E-books and electronic readers such as Kindle are becoming options for students willing to read on a screen. In August, Stamford, Conn.-based Cengage Learning became the first higher education publisher to announce plans to rent books directly to students.

Then there's the Espresso Book Machine, a device able to take digital content and turn it into bound books, including cover art, in three to four minutes at a cost to the retailer of a penny a page, not counting copyright fees.

"What Gutenberg's press did for Europe in the 15th century, digitization and the Espresso Book machine will do for the world tomorrow," boasts the Web site of its maker, On Demand Books.

The machine, at around $100,000, is no small investment, but the number of universities, libraries and other locations with one will total nearly three dozen by early next year, said On Demand Books CEO Dane Neller.

The University of Pittsburgh's library system may install the Espresso as a cost-saving measure as soon as this year, system director Rush Miller said. Carnegie Mellon University's campus store also is exploring the concept, university store director Rick Zuchelli said.

For consumers, the explosion of choices is empowering, if a bit confusing.

Online services from Amazon.com to Half.com have won converts with savings of 50 percent or more.

Bestbookbuys.com, a service that culls prices from 23 online bookstores, points to three popular titles: "Intermediate Accounting," "A First Course in Probability" and "High Speed Digital Design."

Collectively, they list for $425.35, the company says, but in recent days were selling online for $313.86 new and $219.94 used, a savings of $111.49 and $205.41 respectively.

Even so, campus retailers say those sites do not offer the degree of customer service their stores do. They say books bought on the Internet don't always match the edition required in class, can take weeks to arrive and aren't as easily traded for cash.

Even knowing a book's ISBN number won't always guarantee a match because professors may bundle the book with other required materials, said Charles Schmidt, spokesman for the Oberlin, Ohio-based National Association of College Stores.

"You might get the right book, but you won't have ancillary access to the study guide and things like that," he said.

Stores know well the suspicions harbored by students that everyone in the book business profits handsomely at their expense, from professors who write texts and publishers that disseminate them to colleges that get a cut of campus bookstore sales.

Students chafe at new editions rolled out at higher prices, even when little content has changed, and they fume when a title they sold back to the store later is resold at a 25 percent markup.

The industry counters that there actually is little profit once costs including author research, production and marketing are tallied. The college store association says its members make on average only about six cents for each textbook dollar.

An association survey says the average new book sold cost $57. Used books averaged $49.

Still, walk into just about any campus store and it's easy to find eye-popping examples of books, especially in the hard sciences and in business, that list for $150 a copy or more.

At the University of Pittsburgh, sophomore Kelsie Hartpence, 19, of suburban Philadelphia, recalled the sticker shock she felt her freshman year buying books at the campus store -- all new -- for such classes as math, introductory biology and another course requiring eight Shakespeare books.

Her semester total: $450

"I was shocked. I didn't think it was going to be that much," she said. "It was crazy."

She has since cut those costs to $290, largely by buying used and shopping at Amazon.com.

Some students use such social networking sites as Facebook to hunt for deals. Others, including Pitt sophomore Chris Lippert, 19, a double major in mechanical engineering and Spanish, swear by the campus library.

It helped him hold his book costs under $100 this fall.

"I ended up getting almost half the textbooks I needed through the borrowing system," he said. "If someone says they want that book back, you have to return it. You have the normal month. If no one recalls it, you can pretty much keep it for the semester."

If some shop early, others intentionally wait until class begins. The strategy works if a professor says a book on the reading list isn't truly needed, but it backfires if it is required and supplies have run out.

Some professors are creating reading lists that cost students less by using all or parts of books culled from such publishers of open source materials as Flat World Knowledge, based in Nyak, N.Y.

So far, the two-year-old enterprise has produced about a dozen titles under open license, mostly for business classes, that can be read online for free, or purchased as soft-covers for $29.95 in black and white or $59.95 in color, plus $5 shipping.

They're available in MP3 audio or PDF files, with chapters sold individually starting at $1.99.

Professors can click and drag chapters to create custom books and even electronically insert comments and links to study material between chapters.

"What's happening is the cost of disseminating, the cost of marketing, the cost of a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are coming down," said Flatworld co-founder Eric Frank.

Technology is partly why he predicts an industry worth nearly $6 billion in sales could be a fraction of that in 10 years, with many new players competing on price. "It's taken away a lot of the barriers to entering the market," he said.

That said, campus bookstores are far from ceding their position. In fact, they are boosting digital offerings and in some cases creating rental programs. Stores at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon are considering rental programs.

At Carnegie Mellon, the campus store is stocking more used books, given their popularity, Mr. Zuchelli said. In addition to the Espresso machine, employees are pondering e-books and other price reducers.

"Anything that brings the price point down is an advantage to us," he said.

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