Textbookss

yeah, i know what you mean my freshman year i didn't relaly know what i was doing. so, i bought my books from the bookstore, but now i usually don't buy books at all : D. if you're friendly sometimes your prof will have extra books and allow you to "barrow" them for long periods of time, and also go to the library at ur school sometimes they keep extras. you save at least 250 a semester.

 

hey, intro to micro at my school, the book was written by my teacher - my only option was to buy it for $160 at the bookstore... and the teacher "edits" it every year, so i couldnt even sell it back at the end of the semester. What i waste, im not even sure i used the book

 

That's why there's amazon.com

 

Same exact situation, my professor Charles Ballard wrote the damn book and I never used it....now I can't resell it, wasted $80 on that and like $20 for the "course pack" that had practice finals...that was actually useful though, shoulda just got that.

 

Buying books through ebay/amazon is the only way to go. I got my revenge on a bookstore by buying a book for $40 on amazon and selling it to the bookstore for $75.

 

Extortion FTL

 

Maybe we students should start piling these worthless textbooks on the lawns of these profs who write their own books to extort money from students, and set them ablaze



















Then once the profs stopped burning, we could light the books

 

I'm simply sick of paying for text books I don't even use. First week of class we had to read a the first few chapters of are text book, after that we never touched it. What a wast of $120.
I think some one should start a national text book exchange. A not for profit deal where you Buy your text books for your first semester and then trade them in for used/new of equal value.

 

There is such a system, I can't remember the name but they were on myspace. I'll see if I can find it

 

but then you sell the books back after, so you're gonna get atleast half your money back.

i agree textbook prices are super uncool. i didnt even really use my textbooks this year. got all my info off the internets.

 

Maybe I'm psycho or maybe it's just because I'm still in high school,
but I love textbooks. I've asked my teachers if I could purchase them, they always say no. I've taken a few and just paid the fee at the end of the year so I could keep them.

I was kind of excited about college textbooks, but only if they're interesting and well-written and a great reference...

I guess it is mostly paying for that that is a problem, right? That's going to suck.

Damnit I'm weird,

 

yeah, get into college where a $300 textbook is MANDATORY, yet you only use 20 pages worth. you won't get quite so excited when you have to drop a grand on 50 pounds of books also, you never, ever get enough $ from selling them back. the places to which you sell need to make their profit, so they pay you pocket change for something you paid out the ass for, then turn around and sell it for close to what you originally paid. also, the publishers "revise" the books, making new editions that really are only slightly different. We're talking just some edits here and there, and now you need this brand new edition that makes the old one obsolete. Some classes are better than others, the worst is what redchrons mentioned. The professors write their own textbooks, which are exclusive to THAT class in THAT semester. You can't even sell them! The next year/semester, it's a "new" book, and yours is essentially worthless.

Personally, I keep my textbooks to read later, as reference or to brush up (or if I'm just bored) because selling them just isn't worth it


Oh almost forgot, a lot of books now have CDs that come with them and access codes to the publisher's websites that professors often require you purchase. Meaning you can buy a used book, but you still have to buy the CD/access code in order to use it

 

Whoa.

Society needs to go to e-books, I guess, although I hope that doesn't mean we'll evolve to forget how to write.

But then it is only a set price, always, and it can't be resold but will be much less expensive to reproduce and reproduce and reproduce mass amounts of slightly-different textbooks.

I'll probably end up doing what zypyro said. I hope I have enough scholarship money to pay for it. >_<