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Textbooks: Where do you get yours?

Zombie Acorn

Zombie Acorn

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 2, 2009
1,307
9,132
Toronto, Ontario
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
* Subscribed.

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

It won't happen in college. ;)
 
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.
 
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..)
 
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