Back to School sale: Five tips to stretch your book budget

Our yearly Back to School Sale is the perfect time to add new titles to your library's collection — but with thousands of options to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you're looking to meet immediate demand or make strategic additions that will serve students all year, a little planning can help you make the most of your budget. 

Our team put together some of the best tips and tricks for doing exactly that: 

1. Start with what students already want 

Before browsing the sale, take a look at what's happening in your collection right now. Your Holds Manager can help you identify titles students are waiting for, while expired titles that had a lot of engagement may be worth renewing. 

You can also look at your highest-circulating content. The 100 Checkout lending titles (ODMax) are a useful place to find books that are already generating strong demand — and potentially worth adding more copies of. 

Need a Marketplace refresher? Check out our How-To Resources for everything you need to know. 

Don't have Marketplace access? Take a sneak peak at the award-winning titles on sale.

2. Look for books that will keep working for you 

A sale is a great opportunity to think beyond the current school year. Look for enduring titles in the OC/OU (One Copy, One User) lending model that lets one reader borrow the title at a time and never expires. The Metered Access (MA) by checkout lending model is great for trending titles that may fade in popularity over time, so consider stocking up while they're discounted. 

Star-review and award-winning title lists can also help you find books with staying power. From Frindle and The Lightning Thief to The Crossover’s graphic novel adaptation, familiar favorites can continue finding new readers long after back-to-school season is over. 

And we can't forget nonfiction. Evergreen topics like sports, cooking, animals, and biography can appeal to students year after year. 

3. Shop the genres students are actually reading 

If you're not sure where your collection has room to grow, popularity is a good place to start. 

For younger readers, graphic novels and humor are the most popular genres in school collections, followed by fantasy. Older readers tend to gravitate toward mysteries and thrillers, horror, and romantasy. 

Use those trends as a starting point for shopping the sale. Adding high-interest titles can help you offer a collection built around the genres students are already seeking. 

4. Use the sale to build your audiobook collection 

If your collection is heavy on ebooks, the sale can be a good opportunity to add more audiobooks, too. Audiobook usage in school collections almost always exceeds the proportion of titles purchased, so there may be an opportunity to give students more choices in this format. 

One easy strategy: find audiobook versions of your most popular ebooks. Students already know and want those stories, and adding them in another format gives them another way to read. 

Audiobooks can also support accessibility, and because many are available in the OC/OU lending model, you can add them without having to worry about renewing them. 

5.  Let the data do some of the shopping for you 

If you're not sure where to start, Sora's 2025 State of K–12 Digital Reading report is a good place to look. Drawing on data from more than 4 million students and nearly 60 million checkouts during the 2024–2025 school year, it offers a real snapshot of what kids everywhere are reading. 

Pair those trends with your own collection data, then use the sale to fill the gaps. With a little strategy, the Back to School Sale can be more than an opportunity to save — it can be a chance to build a stronger collection for the year ahead. Explore the sale and start shopping now through September 30.

Bonus Tip:

Introducing a new title, teaching a new grade, or looking to update an existing unit? Find resources such as author interviews, cultural representation reflections, graphic organizers, and more from our partners at TeachingBooks.