No shiat. I used to find out what my books were four to six weeks in advance for my classes and buy them used off of Amazon or EBay. I saved about $400 per year in my estimation.

Always tried to find the ones that had been owned by honors students; they were in better condition and had great marginal notes.

I tried that, too. But invariably I would find that the person I thought was an honor student was either a lucky moron or someone who shared the honor student's name.

It's not just the texbook publisher's fault, either. It's the professors who decide they need to change to the latest edition every single year, even when there' no good improvements or changes from the previous edition.

/$600 for books this semester, thank god I am graduating.

Did they write their names in them?

I wrote my name in several places in all of my books. As expensive as they are, it only took once for me to have them stolen before I figured that out.

When I went to college they would change the pages around every year so you had to buy new books. I didn't care since I have a trust fund. Suckers ;)

ten years ago when I was in college, a typical quarter (not semester, west coast rules) of college cost $100-$180 in books. More if I took a science or math, less if it was all paperback humanities.

Thats not that much higher than these kids are saying today.
(3 quarters, times $150 or so per quarter, $450 a year).

Maybe the kids today just expect everything to be free, like music on the internet.

What do they care anyway, they'll just download their papers to turn in.

On the other hand, THIS YEAR is the year I'll finally pay off the last of my school loans.!!!!! So if they can find a way to beat the system by complaining about book prices, by all means go for it. But I think really if anybody has been gouging, its the college tuition itself (which has about doubled in 10 years) rather than the price of books (if this is right whats reported here)

There are lots of textbook exchange sites now.

When I went to college, I didn't bother with textbooks. Big waste.

They have been running this scam for a long time. If you think about it the publishers are guaranteed tons of new sales every year while only making minor changes to the books. Pissed me off

This deserves the obvious tag. The textbook market is one big scam.

"Thats not that much higher than these kids are saying today.
(3 quarters, times $150 or so per quarter, $450 a year)."

No, it's $150 PER BOOK, not per quarter

Don't get me started. I just got my urge to kill down to a managable level...

I wonder how much tax money goes towards new overpriced textbooks for K-12 schools.

I find it strange that it's so hard to find a source for counterfiet textbooks.

Remembering from a earlier Fark article, the same textbooks can be bought from overseas, at a big savings even when shipping/handling costs are figured in. Can't search all Fark articles, but here's one story with all the good details. Can you say, 'collusion' ?

i also teach college. i keep asking my students, "if you kids are so Internet saavy, how come you haven't learned to look for used books on amazon, half, or ebay?"

i usually get the collective, " . . . . . . . oh yeahhhhh."

/looking at saavy thinking i spelled it wrong.

I have a son in college and a wife in grad school and one starting in the fall. Think of all the great booty I could have bought with those books. It was the same thing 30 years ago except now there's competition on the web.

Shows yaz once and fer all.. booklearnin' is EVIL.

/Bush's fault

My university has a text book rental system. Check them out at the beginning of the semester and turn them in at the end. It's fantastic.

Occasionally I have to buy an optional book, but I've never spent more than 50 bucks.

I'm putting my wife through school and the books are the killer of all the expenses. Which sites do you students use to get the best deals on books???

Well in Georgia with hope, they give you 100 for books. that will at least pay for one book.

How to buy college books while making a profit:
1. Locate new textbook.
2. Find associated used workbook.
3. Peel UPC sticker and used sticker from workbook, place on new textbook.
4. Grab a couple hundred dollars in other books. (Clerk will not notice your $100+ textbook only cost $10 if you have a high total bill.)
5. Return the unneeded books that were only used to jack up the total bill.
6. Rinse and repeat until you have all the books for the semester.
7. At the end of the semester, sell your books back to the store at a price higher that what you paid.

I averaged $200 profit per semster.

I'd love to see a breakdown of the buyback--sell used price. I'm sure all college Farkers have had the buy book for $90, sell it back for $10, put back on the shelves for like $75. I want to know just how much of that markup is pure profit.

Video game stores have got this scam nicely figured out too. I can understand when they offer you 50 cents for your copy of Madden 64, but it's damn near criminal when they offer you, say, $18 for a game that's $50 new and $45 used or $3 for a game that is $20 new and $18 used.

I dont know if they are such a scam. I mean, those guys dont put out a product that just rakes in the sales. How many sales do you think they get for "Differential Equations of Underwater Basket Weaving"? Like what, 4000 max? Probably less, a class of 15 grad students times like 40, 50 universities? I think part of the reason textbooks are so expensive is the market is so small. The market is small simply because many of those books focus on a very specific topic

As for putting out new editions every year, I think this might be because students dont like seeing screencaps of windows 3.1 in their textbooks. Publishers might feel that if they dont update that stuff (and have *something* about the great interweb) they will not get the street cred.

Well in Georgia with hope, they give you 100 for books. that will at least pay for one book.

The one that teaches you about Biological Changes Over Time?

You have to be careful when buying used textbooks, though. If the ass-hammer who owned it before you was completely clueless, you might get features like "Chapter 3 totally highlighted" and "Margin notes about puppies and pizza." Only took me one time to page through more carefully.

One solution that's been proposed is to have a student-faculty committee jointly choose a list of books that professors can assign for a class. This would give publishers an incentive to charge less/issue fewer editions. Right now theres no such incentive since the people who are paying for the books (students) aren't the people who are chooseing the books (professors) and after paying $117 for a math book we used twice and $65 for an ACTING textbook i'm quite convinced the teachers don't give a fark.

At last. A good reason for being and English major.

No new text books, just $3 paper backs or a trip to the library for crap you don't want to own. If I hadn't been forced to take those gen ed courses, I could've gotten through 4 years of undergrad paying like $200 total for my course material.

when i tried to buy online, even weeks before class, i always had to buy the books from the school because they came 3 weeks late. they were not even on backorder, It was such a pain in the butt

"Strangely, 2 had the profs name as author"

Funny how often that happens....

The most heinous purchase I've ever made was a poorly printed obscure book on rhetoric. 180 pages for $50. I'd rather shell out $150 for the works of Shakespeare than $50 for a pamphlet.

I checked and re-checked most of my books out of the library. Saved much $$$.

E-Books.

yep.

there are students who now scan textbooks, page by page, and give out the pdf's burned on cd-roms.

no profit but for education.

and its searchable.

I worked at a textbook store in college. I can say for a fact that our mark-up was only 2% on new books and we barely made payroll some weeks. Somehow, I doubt the publishers had the same problem...

For law students, the key is to go to the bookstore, write down the ISBN numbers for the books you need, and then go on bn.com or amazon.com and find them new, for less, or slightly used, for a lot less. I'm in my last semester of law school now, and probably saved at least $200 during my three years.

If professors try to foist that "course packet" on you, which is really just a xeroxed pile of cases, just find out which cases they are and get them with your free Lexis or WestLaw access.

"American students must pay $125," said Holcomb, holding up a calculus book. "In Canada, students pay $95 U.S. dollars for this. In Great Britain, students pay $65 U.S. dollars for this."

Now what the fark is that BS about? Lousy, untrustworthy corporations. Makes me retch.

2004-01-30 11:33:01 AM omisan
Well in Georgia with hope, they give you 100 for books. that will at least pay for one book.
The one that teaches you about Biological Changes Over Time?


Bio-what now?
Could you dumb it down a little?

Sincerely,
The P.T.A. of the state of Georgia.

Bubbaprog = hero. Damn I wish I had those professors.

I attend a very expensive business school in Chicago. In addition to the $3,440 price for the class, the books cost an additional $250.00 per class. One is a course packet, filled with articles I can download for free, and then we have a $179.00 book written by the professor himself (Conflict of interest). Why conflict of interest? Because the bastard keeps writing a new edition every year and changes the problems a little so you get screwed.

I say fark em all!!

The latest fad: "This book is only for sale in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Vietnam..."

Hope is paid by the Lottery, and is a scholorship that you can earn by having a b average.

My $0.02.

I went to college starting in '92 and finally graduated in '99 (working full time... I'm not that dumb).

When I started, my average textbook ran about $35 to $45. If I had a book that was $60, that was expensive.

When I finished, if I found a book that was $95, that was low end. $120 - $140 was much more likely.

I highly doubt that publishing cost rose that much in 6 years...

One of the perks of being a poli sci major was that a lot of our textbooks were things that are readily available in trade paperbacks, like the plays of Aristophanes, biographies of presidents, The Federalist, and so on. My history, Russian, and econ books more than made up for the savings on the poli sci books, though. And don't even get me started about the computer science and bliology textbooks. ESH, I know exactly what you mean about those gen ed books being busget busters.