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1. If it is the teachers book ask if they can get a deal, most decent teachers will get you a deal or even give you the book for free. I've had this happen a couple of times.
2. Odds are your school library will have the book on reserve, meaning that you can take the book and make copies as you need them, this nice because you almost never need every chapter.
3. Check with the teacher, I would say 70-80% of the time you can use the previous edition, which tends to be 1/2 the price or less.
4.Find a friend who used the book, especially if it is a book with a cd and workbook, a lot of students will sell their books to another student first to avoid having to mail it.
Good tips! The library one is especially good; most students don't realize that there are usually a few copies of textbooks in the library. Make sure you ask your professor at the beginning of the term, though, because some of them don't request the library have a copy of the text unless students ask for it.
A couple more tips:
5. If you sign up for a class and the textbook is wrapped in cellophane (it often happens for textbooks with CDs or extra materials), don't unwrap it until you're sure you're going to stay in the class. If you drop the class and the book has been unwrapped, the bookstore won't accept it for a refund and you'll have to sell it back as used.
6. Go in on an expensive book with another student; you'll gain a study partner and won't have to pay as much. I wouldn't do that with more than one person though; you won't be using the book all the time, but if you have to share it with more than one person you might not get as much time to study as you need.
Some schools will get the list of books from the teach and keep copies, and also some schools like mine kept copies that you could check out, but not take out of the library that way there will always be one there.
I once stopped a friend, a freshman from buying all of her semesters books at once, from the bookstore, it was close.
7. You can buy books from half.com, or other online purveyors to save money.
8. Check school-related message boards, often someone will sell you their book for a price substantially less than the bookstore (usually above the "buyback" rate).
On a related note, I don't know if checking a book out from the library and making copies of it is actually legal.
As long as it's for personal use it's not really an issue, your not selling the copies.
Also my college had something called eres where we could put copies of articles or 10% of a book, or basically anything written, onto a system that students could then print.
I wasn't talking about copying the whole book, just needed sections.
The best trick is not to buy the book at all. Most (of my) classes didn't reference the book or require it to do well in classes. Especially nowadays, since you can find sooo much information on the internet.
1. If it is the teachers book ask if they can get a deal, most decent teachers will get you a deal or even give you the book for free. I've had this happen a couple of times.
Yes, you'd be amazed at how many editions and extra books we have. Sometimes, we're just looking at books to give away.
2. Odds are your school library will have the book on reserve, meaning that you can take the book and make copies as you need them, this nice because you almost never need every chapter.
Sometimes not even just on reserve. Sometimes it's in regular circulation.
3. Check with the teacher, I would say 70-80% of the time you can use the previous edition, which tends to be 1/2 the price or less.
I'd bump that up to 90%, unless we're using a completely different book.
4.Find a friend who used the book, especially if it is a book with a cd and workbook, a lot of students will sell their books to another student first to avoid having to mail it.
That's good too.
If the book has an online component, sometimes you can pay the $35 for that and it has an e-book that goes with it.
There are some bookstores like Half Price Books that have popular textbooks for a fraction of the list price.
Last edited by anadyr21; 09-23-2008 at 01:24 PM..
Reason: clarification
As long as it's for personal use it's not really an issue, your not selling the copies.
I wasn't talking about copying the whole book, just needed sections.
Without consent giving by the publisher, this would still be illegal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elipar
The best trick is not to buy the book at all. Most (of my) classes didn't reference the book or require it to do well in classes. Especially nowadays, since you can find sooo much information on the internet.
Yup I agree, but I would ask former students if the book was needed or not, not the professor.
The best piece of advice so far is that if you are going to buy a text book, then buy the previous edition. I purchased the eighth edition of an Oceanography textbook for under ten bucks (with shipping) while most of the other students bought the new ninth edition, which set them back $160 (a few bought the ninth edition from Half, but still ended up spending around $70). The funny thing is that the teacher even recommended buying the older edition as the two books are almost identical in content.
Another thing came to mind: you can also save tons of money if you buy a very used copy; the more 'used' it is, then usually the cheaper.
College textbooks are an egregious rip-off. The publishers crank out new editions merely to discourage the used book market.
Back in the late 1990s, I read from a source I considered reliable (but I cannot now remember) that college textbooks provided 25% of the profits -- that's profits, not revenues -- of the publishing industry in North America. They have students by the ... short hairs ... and they are raping them for every piastre they can.
Buying textbooks stinks, but you do tend to need them, I used to try to find every option I could before buying a book, and I never paid full price.
I remember one of my fav. history teachers had so many books that he could not do meetings in his very large office. He was a great resource for books when I had to write a paper.
Seriously though, I do say use your library. When I worked at my college library so few students used the library, because they never knew about what they could find, and there options. Also librarians can help you find alternatives.
including getting a textbook from another school, so that even if your school doesn't have it they can get it.
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