Textbooks: Where do you get yours?

[Zombie Acorn]

Its around that time when college is about to start back up and unsuspecting freshmen are about to have their wallets raped by the university bookstores. I was one of these poor saps my freshmen year before I figured out that you buy a 200 dollar text and they give you 8 bucks for it at the end of the semester, just to resell it for 170 the next year.

Where does everyone buy their texts from? I usually hit up ebay because they have international texts which are identical to US versions for a portion of the cost. To give you an idea I have saved nearly $600 dollars on only 4 text books this semester so far.

I figured this might be educational for anyone heading off the college, don't let the bookstore screw you over. Even the used books are overpriced.

[timerollson]

bigwords.com

and/or

abebooks.com

I was in my undergraduate business school so most of my books were large textbooks running upwards of $200 each. I just bought the International Editions (paperback cover) and never spent more than $50-$60 on them. Then, I'd resell on the Facebook Marketplace & Craigslist for around $30-$40 at the end of each semester.

[ucfgrad93]

I just bought my daughter's books at half.com and saved around $100-150.

[ct2k7]

mine are provided by my sixth-form college, aka my school.

[J the Ninja]

My campus bookstore seems better than most. They actually give a semi-decent amount of money for the books, and their used prices are somewhat competitive with what you find on Amazon Marketplace. I usually just get the list of books I need, then shop around a bit for the good deals. Remember to BUY USED! They are much cheaper, and since they mainly depreciate from becoming "Not new", used books can generally be sold back for a much greater percentage of what you paid for them, even at campus bookstores.

[NEENAHBOY]

I buy all my textbooks new from Amazon. I just can't read used books unless I know where they've been...it's a weird OCD thing I have, and also why I almost never patronize libraries.

I will, however, sell them back to my campus bookstore. More often than not I get a deal comparable to what I'd make selling them on Amazon Marketplace, only without the hassle of actually having to do that.

[it5five]

I buy them used on Amazon. There are some great deals in the marketplace.

[toxictrix]

I use bookfinder.com and just type in the isbn then pick the cheapest book from the list...

[rhsgolfer33]

New from Amazon and Half.com. Saved over $300 on five books this semester, all US editions too. I don't do used books unless I can examine them before purchasing. Plus, most of the time a new book on Amazon or Half is significantly cheaper than buying a used book at school, so I still save quite a bit. Most of accounting books are updated for each year anyways, so there isn't usually much choice other than a new book.

[toxictrix]

I pretty much only buy used. It is just too expensive to go new for a book I will use for one semester...

[InvalidUserID]

Half.com

International editions never bothered me either and I actually preferred them since they were soft-cover.

[ecstasy]

* Subscribed.

I had enough experience getting screwed over by high school textbooks.

It won't happen in college.

[cuestakid]

I have a Learning Disability. As such, I was willing to pay whatever my bookstore was charging for my books no matter what because I needed the books immediately so that I could get started on whatever it was that I needed to. I guess I just accepted the fact that books are a necessary but absurdly expensive part of my college career and I was not in the place to risk my books getting delayed or getting the wrong version or whatever. I simply decided I would go into the bookstore, get the needed and recommended books and almost just ignore the price because if I dwelled on it I would just get upset.

[neoserver]

I get mine from Amazon. CAn usually save on average about $30-50 over my University's bookstore (these are for new books, can get better deals used obviously..)