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Instead of buying textbooks like I did for undergrad, I am now renting my textbooks through chegg.com for the semester. I print out the shipping label from my account online, get a box and send them back. I paid around $39 for a book that was $98 at the bookstore. yikes! If I end up wanting to keep a book, I pay a buy price and that's it.
Appalachian State rents the textbooks and you are charged if you don't return the book. If I recall, the rental fee was in the tuition somewhere. I don't know why this isn't done elsewhere.
Okay, I am learning quickly about textbooks in general!!
Last Spring was my first time as a full time student in face to face classes and I was very stressed about having the book before class. I spent a TON of money on textbooks since I got my financial aid money 3 days before class, no time to hunt around.
This semester I got over that nonsense. I didn't buy any of the pricier books until AFTER the first day of class, after speaking with my instructors. Most of the instructors seem in touch with the price issue. Maybe because I am in a community college near the center of the city with a good amount of lower income students?? So waiting saved me a bundle. I had 2 Professors that were surprised and shocked to learn that the book the college bookstore and the nearby bookstores was listing as "required" was NOT the book they wanted us using. They both actually preferred the older edition, shaving a ton of money off the top right there!
So just by talking to my instructors and not freaking about being without the book for a week or so I was able to save a lot. I spent a total of $135 and if I'd bought from the bookstores I would have spent $600! Partially because 2 of my courses were courses requiring TWO textbooks each (which is crazy IMO).. c'mon! Seems like one is enough (this was for History and a Government class) but anyway.... I'm just glad none required any sort of stupid web access "key" or code. Those can totally mess up your plans to be frugal!
I bought the older editions when possible, and bought everything by getting the ISBN and just searching and searching. One I bought on Craigslist for half of the price I found everywhere else (it's newer and using an older wouldn't do), the others mainly came from Amazon marketplace and half.com and Abe Books. I considered Chegg and other rental sites but mostly when I can find it for close to that price I just buy it so I can have a shot at selling it after the course (to another student, I mean... I never bother with trying to sell to the bookstore anymore!).
I am just happy I was able to save so much this time compared to Spring. I know it won't always be the case but it helped a lot to have figured out some ways around the crazy textbook prices and let me buy some "splurge" items I would normally not spend on (like left-hander spiral notebooks, good pens, and an awesome backpack)..
Now if I could just buy some extra sleep with that extra money!
1) Buying used books was available in the 1970s. It is not something that is recent
2) Professors are in bed with the publishers and are pressured constantly to introduce new editions. In addition, they try to encourage the purchase of study guides and other "add-ons."
3) The publishers often market the same books OVERSEAS for a fraction of the price. Don't just look at Amazon. Look at places like Amazon.uk, etc.
4) If you are in a town with multiple colleges, shop around at the bookstores.
5) In the current age of high speed printers and copiers, I am surprised that more people don't purchase the book and convert it into a digital format and forget about buying the book completely. Of course, that might be illegal and of course, I am not recommending it.
1) Buying used books was available in the 1970s. It is not something that is recent
You are correct, however you are missing two points:
1). To put it simply, buying used textbooks was just not the thing to do. Yes, some students did buy used textbooks, but it was no where near the level that it is at today and they generally bought them off of other students.
2). It was popular for students to keep their college textbooks and add them to their home libraries. So, there just weren't that many books in the used market to begin with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlawrence01
2) Professors are in bed with the publishers and are pressured constantly to introduce new editions. In addition, they try to encourage the purchase of study guides and other "add-ons."
How are professors 'in bed' with the publishers? Oh yeah, that's right; they are not.
"Bundled" books are packages that are bundled by the publisher. Not the professor. Not the bookstore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlawrence01
3) The publishers often market the same books OVERSEAS for a fraction of the price. Don't just look at Amazon. Look at places like Amazon.uk, etc.
The book itself might cost less overseas by comparison, but it is not cheap to ship a book across the ocean. Amazon et. al., might only charge a few bucks for shipping, but Amazon does not ship the book, the seller does, who, ultimately by the way, ends up paying the 'real' shipping costs which of course gets passed along to you. If you purchase an overseas edition from an overseas seller, then you are going to end up paying the same amount, if not more, than if you just bought the book here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlawrence01
4) If you are in a town with multiple colleges, shop around at the bookstores.
The books that are sold at college bookstores are specialized to that particular school. College bookstores are not like a Barnes and Noble; they do not carry a wide variety of text books, but yet only the textbooks that are used at the particular college.
It still wouldn't hurt to shop around. Good luck.
By the way, college book stores actually have a higher profit margin on used books than they do with new books. It is to their financial advantage to sell used textbooks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlawrence01
5) In the current age of high speed printers and copiers, I am surprised that more people don't purchase the book and convert it into a digital format and forget about buying the book completely. Of course, that might be illegal and of course, I am not recommending it.
Uh, how can someone buy the book and then forget about buying the book (head wound or disease aside).
Honestly, would you want to sit there and scan in every page? The course would be half-over by the time you got done.
And copies? Are you serious! Do you know who much it would cost to photocopy and entire textbook? It wouldn't be cheap enough to be worth it.
I go to Cheapest Textbooks, i use them every year for school they are a great place to buy <a href="http://www.cheapesttextbooks.com/">used textbooks online</a> and they also have <a href="http://www.cheapesttextbooks.com/">used textbooks for sale</a>
It's almost like the colleges are in bed with the publishing companies. They could have easily kept the previous edition and it would have cost $75 less (and there would have been used books available for much less than that)...but they didn't....they selected a brand new edition. They could have waited a couple of years to upgrade (it's not like the human anatomy changes that much over time) and you could have found used ones for sale on the net.
No kidding. Really?
I was having breakfast fifteen years ago near Monterey, CA. At the adjacent table was a locap psychology professor and a couple of employees from a publisher. The professor wanted to sell the book for about $75. The publisher wanted to charge $125 plus add in a study guide and a work book.
Seriously, NOONE has to pay full price for books. Ways to save include:
Grey market editions from abroad.
EBay/Amazon/Half, etc.
Used books.
Prior editions (generally there are few changes in many editions.
Sharing books (done extensively abroad where there are fewer $$$s).
With all of the opportunities afforded by the internet, you can generally get a deal on any price.
As a student from 2000-2004, this thing smells like a SCAM. $$$ SCAM $$$. $$$ SCAM $$$.
There's just no way of avoiding it. It's funny how textbook prices keep skyrocketing, as more questions come up about the value of a college degree now in the workplace. You'd think it'd be the opposite.
The value of a college degree rising in the marketplace, thus more demand, thus maybe a higher price.
-I don't believe it's because the textbook market is "limited" or small. Record numbers of people are going to college now. I think something like 70% of highschool kids go to college, vs 35 or 40% in the 70's. If that's the case, why weren't books even more expensive 30 years ago?
-And with technology, open sourcing now, etc, prices could be much, much cheaper. I bet $25-35 average per class.
They're *all* in bed with each other I think...prof's, publishers, colleges, administrators, politicans, the entire educational complex in this country. About 25 people for one bed. Its an incredible scam they've got going. Just charge more and more money, for something worth less and less in the marketplace. It defies even the most rudimentary, basic economics.
-You can save money, but they come up with a similar number of "gotcha's", like supplemental material only available at the college bookstore. Or books with a CD rom in the back.
I had several of those in college. And if you break the seal on the cd rom, you can't sell it. Or you can't buy it used. Or something to get you.
-Things like kindle must scare the daylights of out publishers. This industry needs a radical change. Much like the music industry that charged $15.99 for cd's with 1 or 2 songs that you wanted. And now you can buy the song you want for 99 cents. Something similar is probably going to happen to this business.
If you quit buying new textbooks you have stopped the cashflow for the people who write these books. If you put them out of a job then you won't have any new textbooks in 5 years because no one will have an incentive to continue research for them and write them and publish them!! The textbook market is very small; it requires a lot of research to produce a disproportionately small number of books going to a very small portion of the population.
This is spun to look like another "free market failure" because this one sided article in Wikipedia (the endless infallible fountain for all truthful knowledge) was written to play on the emotions of cash strapped students instead of looking at the facts of living in a free capitalist society.
In my days in elementary and middle school we had old out of date books for everything. Even math books can be obsolete. There was no benefit to saving money with old outdated information. I want new updated textbooks.
And by the way, have you looked at the price of tuition? If you want to complain about paying too much for something, complain about that!
This is all true...that wikipedia article is FULL of half-truths and convenient information
The easiest solution would be to offer electronic versions of the text books for a fraction of the cost. The publishers would not have to charge as much money and printing costs would be offset.
I have learned to bide my time when it comes to buying textbooks, especially for qualitative classes. I'm a business student, so for all of my quantitative classes (accounting, finance, etc.) I've had no choice but to buy the book because there were several assignments that came directly from the text. For other classes, however, I've found that most exam material came from lectures and powerpoint slides, which are usually uploaded online for students to review. Most of the time, I only crack the book once or twice a semester.
Surprisingly, there was one time when a professor told the class that we could probably get by without the book, provided that we showed up to class every day and took good notes. From what I understand, every student in that class (about 40) passed with no problem.
Seems to me that textbook prices follow the supply/demand rule pretty well. The demand being that 100% of the students need to buy the book or possible fail the class and supply is such that the bookstores often have a contract with a supplier so they can only get the books through them so text book companies can price them at whatever. What is missing is more competition. Now that kids can buy books on Amazon/Ebay, etc. you may see prices coming down but then again, maybe not.
Thats what the market will , in this case must, bear-the "free market" in any case is an ideological term having no basis in reality.
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