textbooks = $$$$

offroadcmpr

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today was the first day of classes of college, what a difference!
In high school, they would give you the textbooks, and you would return them at the end of the year at no charge.

Now, i spend over $170 on books for 5 classes, and I got off easy! My friend spent over $300. And we only use them for one semester! A hard cover book usually goes for over $100, and some classes require several.

We can sometimes resell it back to the school, but at less than half of what we bought it at! And that doesnt always work because the textbooks companies are always coming out with new editions, which means that the school won't take it back.

I had a softcover book that i bought for $18, and a slightly larger softcover book at $60! what makes it cost so much different, its practically the same size?

I understand that it must cost a lot to get all off the information, but when they come out with new editions, usually very little is changed, which means that they must be making quite a profit off of this.

Is there any way to save money on this? I try to buy used if I can, but only a few books are sold used. Has it always been like this?

(sorry for venting on this, its just that I have to do this same thing over and over for the next few years, and I may not get so lucky next time)

Brandon
 

matt_j

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Yes go thru half.com... Problem is you wont have your books for about 2 weeks and not every books may be available but example: I did spend $600 on my paramedic books... later on when priced there were $250 on half.com.

There are also websites that specialize in college books. I used them in the last year of college. I don't remember web addies for them.
 

SilverFox

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Hello Brandon,

I believe the only thing that has changed is that the new revisions are coming out faster making your current textbook obsolete sometimes before the semester is over. :)

I was told that some students copy the last couple of chapters in the textbook, and sell it back before the semester is over. I don't know if that is good advice or not.

Tom
 

Geologist

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My biggest tips about books:

1) Buy used from other students if possible. Especially your 1st couple semesters, students will leave the school for good and you might pick up on a deal. Don't be afraid to post wanted signs for the used books that you need.

2) Use last years edition... sometimes you can get the older editions for free or next to nothing. Since the material is basically the same, the only extra work might be copying problem sets for technical textbooks.

3) Share a book! Share a used book! Very easy to do and may help you find a study partner. If your study partner happens to be attactive to you, then you get a BONUS!!!!

4) Don't buy the book. WHAT? This very often does not apply to your first year of school with basic classes..... BUT Sometimes teachers will require 2,3,4 books, but the teacher is over confident in what material that they will cover. I have more than once bought $50 paperbacks that we never even used - EVER. You can always wait until you need it. Often the school library has copies of all books in use (usually you can only use them for an hour or two). For a book that is not going to be used often, ask the professor to put a copy in the library for reference.

In general the books are expensive because of the relatively few copies in print compared to normal books. Professors are often "bribed"/encouraged to use newer editions/ other texts. They get sent 2-5 copies for evaluation. That gets them a new book and a few to sell as well.....
 

AJ_Dual

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Just wait. Eventually you'll come across that "gem" of a professor who has an awsome scam.

He/she writes a textbook in his/her area of expertise. Then to be sure they cash in on the royalties from the publisher, they require the book in thier own class.

Classic.

I see no reason why text material can't be released via CD-ROM in a secure format, or at least one difficult enough to crack that the limited audience of any given textbook would make it pointless to try and crack it. Sell it with an activation code or an experation date at the end of the class or semester, and charge a few bucks.

If that's too hard, make the textbooks online for download as PDF or some proprietary encrypted format, and hand out USB data keys with a serial number into a ROM. You put down a $50-100 deposit on the key, and minus some reasonable nominal fee like $5, get it back at the end of the semester. No key, no text. If you want to keep the text for reference, or give it to a friend, you loose the deposit. High-value proprietary business software does it all the time for stuff like expensive network managment utilites and CAD.

"Poor" students with no PC could download the textbook onto any campus lab PC from the publisher's website, and open it with their key. Or, all campus texts could be on all campus computer hard drives updated each semester, and the key just opens them. You could even build in a "quote" function to prevent plagerisim. Make cut-n-paste quotes from the online textbook a watermarked .JPG file that automatically puts the bibliography across the face of the quote.

However, that would make sense, save paper, ink, storage space, fuel for delivery trucks, time, and money.
 
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greenLED

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I found bookarea.com (addall.com) and I haven't looked for books anywhere else for 6 years now. I cannot tell you how much I've saved over the years. G'luck in school!
 

JOshooter

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If you spent $100 on books, you got off easy. I just spent $400 on my books, plus $60 on *another*:rolleyes: calculator, I got what I can used, didn't have a chance to buy offline, plus I'd like to look at the condition of my book before I buy used.
 

matthewdanger

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When I was in school I used to try find out as far in advance as I could what books I would need. Then I would hit half.com and amazon. You can save a lot of money by shopping at places other than the campus bookstore. Also you can try renting your books from students who already taken the class. My univeristy had an online database of people looking to buy, sell, trade, and rent books.
 

bexteck

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Reading the previous posts, I wish I was paying what some of the people there had. This semester, the books for my 5 classes come to a grand total of $740. This is for several engineering books and a few chemistry books. The worst part of the whole thing is that at the end of the semester they are practically worthless. Something needs to be done about the prices we students are forced to pay for these books. I already pay $35k a year for college, I don't need another $1400 a year in books too.
 

idleprocess

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When I first started taking college classes in 1996, it was easy enough to sell books back a the end of the semester - They'd buy any book for 50% of the cover price. If you bought used (sold for 75% of cover price), you didn't lose out on much. Nowadays, publishers are shoving out new editions every 12 months or so - which is rough on the used book market.

$100 is getting off easy. I just bought $160 worth of books for a class that cost $150 to take! If you attend a community college, the cost of books will routinely exceed the price of tuition. University courses are another thing...
 

simbad

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I just spent 400 euros in books for my children today, to start with, next week I have to buy (my wife goes) more items like folders, copybooks, pencils and new uniform, yes, still are many schools where the use of a uniform is obligatory.
So, no lights this month.
 

offroadcmpr

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wow, it really does sound like I got off easy. I don't think I should be complaining.

bexteck - thats a lot. I think you hit a point on this subject. When I was looking at colleges to go to, I forgot to add the price of books. I'm sure that many people overlooked this cost when considering how much college is going to set them back.

simbad - I was thinking the same thing about no lights for a while.
 

MicroE

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I spent about $300US on textbooks for 2 graduate engineering classes this semester.
Many school bookstores are now run by for-profit corporations, NOT the schools. My school, NJIT, has a bookstore run by Follett.
The publishers charge egregious prices for textbooks because the students are a captive market. This subsidizes the publisher's paperback (fiction) sales.---Marc
 

IlluminatingBikr

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I spent (my mom and dad spent) $150 on a calc book. The class is technically a city college course, although I am taking it at my high school.

Seems like $150 for a book could be lowered a little. I mean there must be thousands of kids that have to buy the book every year....and that adds up quite a bit. Part of the problem might be that it isn't a very capitalistic market.
 

jtr1962

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I remember a few times buying a book, xeroxing it, and then returning it the next day for a refund. I usually only did this with the more expensive books. When you don't have much money you try to be creative. With scanners and OCR software it would be even easier to do this nowadays. While I didn't mind paying a fair and reasonable price for textbooks, such as $10 to $20, some of my engineering books were $100 back in the early 1980s. I just couldn't afford this and neither could my parents. Most of the books I needed weren't available used, either.

I like the idea of putting textbooks on a CD. You're already paying for the course so the tuition should include the cost of any needed texts. A "virtual" text costs next to nothing to produce.
 

idleprocess

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All the "virtual" textbooks on CD-ROM, etc I've seen are crude attempts by the publisherto cut their own costs while drasticly increasing their own profits. They cost just as much as a regular textbook, are more difficult to use, have paranoid copy-protection (copy-paste? Forget it!) ... and can't be resold since they're "software" complete with terms of use, license agreements, online activation, and silly interactive websites the instructors are encouraged to use so if nothing else you can't participate in the graded activities that happen to occur online...

Good idea, cruddy greedhead implementation from what I've seen.
 
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