Poll of the Day > How should I obtain my schoolbooks this semester?

(+) Yeah! (+)

On one hand, I won't know for certain what schoolbooks I will need for this fall semester until the school bookstore's website sets up its catalog. If I do go this route, I will have to pay a higher price at the beginning of the semester for my books, and will have to resell at about thirty-five percent of the original cost at the end of the semester. On the other hand, if I rent through Amazon, I will need to pay only half of the MSRP cost of these books in order to rent them until the end of the semester. On Amazon, the rental costs of my books currently total up to sixty-nine American dollars, plus twenty-five dollars to buy this other book I need. Alternatively, I could just obtain all of them illegally on one device, but I feel so guilty about not paying the authors of the book the money they deserve after having gone through the trouble of writing these textbooks, that I dismissed the idea. I mean, I have more than enough money to pay for textbook expenses and that damned American tuition, so there's no reason why I shouldn't do so. Anyway, what do you think I should do?

I must have these answers.
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Online.
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I rented all throughout college unless I *had* to buy my own copy. If the textbook was something that I thought could be useful in the future, I just bought it after renting and paid the difference at the end of the semester. I did all of my renting through Amazon and Chegg. Don't know if Chegg is still a big deal since I've been out of school for a couple years, but I imagine they are.

I only really entertained buying in my first semester of college but selling them back to the bookstore or amazon wasn't worth it financially and finding classmates to sell them to was a hassle imo.
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PuddingBoy posted...

I rented all throughout college unless I *had* to buy my own copy.

This.

College text books are attrociously expensive.
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piracy
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Okay, I rented two out of the three books I need for the semester. I'm holding out on the third, because I actually placed a rental order on all three books a while back, but then cancelled them, worrying that these books would no longer be needed when the bookstore website's official catalog went up. Then when I went back to re-order these books, the option to rent the third was no longer there. I'm hoping that it'll come back up within the next two weeks or so. It's about twenty-five dollars to buy, but before, it was only seventeen to rent. Forgive me if this subject is too dull, and such. <<';
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Yea, find a free online version if you can, also, actually ask your professor or previous students if you really need the textbook. I've just completed my first year, I was supposed to have 4 textbooks, Biology, Statistics, Anatomy, and History. Never got the Anatomy and still passed barely, rented Stat for $25 and used it like twice, bought bio for $17 and used it once, and then I got an old version of the history book for free from the library and barely used it either.

I'd make sure you're not wasting your money and use it on something useful. Also, how bad is your tuition? I'm at a small college, and because I still live at home and get a lot of financial aid, I actually got over $200 refunded out of the nothing I had to pay for Fall and Spring, but then had to pay just about $400 for Summer. With just HOPE and PELL
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E-book.
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For one thing wait until the first class and see what the instructor says. It isnt uncommon for them to say that you dont even need a book for the course. There might even be copies available at the campus library.

If you do then absolutely buy used or rent online. The campus bookstore is there to take money from naive people plain and simple. Depending on the class you may even be able to do just fine with a previous edition, considering how minor the changes can be from one to the next.
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SirPikachu posted...

free online version

I can, already did, but deleted it because I thought it wouldn't be fair to the people who spent the money to write them.

SirPikachu posted...

how bad

Four-hundred and sixty-two American dollars per credit.
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get your dad to buy them all

next
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Depending on various factors, you might decide to email the professor of the class and ask them what they plan to do about textbooks. If theyre not so busy they will probably respond, because not so many people will email them asking about the course before it actually starts.
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Sell your body to make enough money to buy them. That and/or sleep with the teacher for good grades.
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Google libgen

jramirez23 posted...

email the professor of the class and ask them what they plan to do about textbooks

I'm too shy, and I'm afraid that if I rescinded my transaction now, I won't be able to rent the books in my order, like the third one I mentioned earlier. :(

Goen posted...

libgen

EclairReturns posted...

SirPikachu posted...

free online version

I can, already did, but deleted it because I thought it wouldn't be fair to the people who spent the money to write them.

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thriftbooks.com
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EclairReturns posted...

jramirez23 posted...

email the professor of the class and ask them what they plan to do about textbooks

I'm too shy

You're too shy to email? WTF? I can understand being shy and uncomfortable talking on the phone, but too shy for email?

You better work on that because you won't make it anywhere in the real working world if you're that shy. I get over 100 emails per day at my office job and the majority of them require a response from me...

EclairReturns posted...

I can, already did, but deleted it because I thought it wouldn't be fair to the people who spent the money to write them.

What's unfair is you being taken advantage of and nickel and dimed at every step for things you need because you live in scamerica.

Speaking as a guy that has written open source software 50 times more coherent and useful than some dickhead's mandatory guide on how to succeed in college.
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rogerskg1979 posted...

too shy to email

Only if it's new people with whom I'm conversing. Besides, if I were to e-mail some bloke, I would be the type of person to spend at least two hours in front of the computer getting all nervous and anxious about what kind of reply I'm going to get. Then I'd be dreading how people would react to my e-mail and what kind of response they would send me like it's a notice for how I would be put to death.

Yellow posted...

scamerica

I decided to cave in and go the illegitimate route. Three of my schoolbooks on one portable device was just too tempting to pass up. Though I am very scared about what would happen if someone were to discover that I have copies. I'm very worried I'd get suspended; and so close to my graduation date. Then I started either remembering something that happened to me or something that my mind fabricated out of sheer anxiety. I might have e-mailed everyone in some class about a copy of my textbook over a year ago. How I managed to not get caught, despite remembering being reprimanded for it indirectly when the instructor told the class that it's not kosher, is beyond me. Sometimes when I get nervous, I tend to relive things causing me anxiety that can't possibly have happened (usually things that could have happened but never did), or remember things that have happened that did cause me intense anxiety at the time. It's not uncommon for me to forget really uncomfortable situations and experiences, forget about them, and remember them in vivid detail some time later. Then I can't stop thinking about it, and that's all I can think about for the day. Sometimes, I cannot tell the false memories from the real ones, and it's really frightening... <<;
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EclairReturns posted...

but I feel so guilty about not paying the authors of the book the money they deserve after having gone through the trouble of writing these textbooks, that I dismissed the idea.

man they've been paid 100x over for that shit. college textbooks are such a fucking racket.
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I like how teachers always use the newest of books as well for their curriculum...I really wonder if Calculus 101 has changed in the past 50 years.
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Jen0125 posted...

paid 100x over for that

Well, at least I feel a little less guilty about doing what I've done tonight, then.

LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

Calculus 101 has changed in the past 50 years

I don't know about that, but I've heard that recently they've separated the third semester of calculus into two semesters.
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wwinterj25 posted...

Sell your body to make enough money to buy them. That and/or sleep with the teacher for good grades.

Did you come in to some money by any chance?
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Mead posted...

For one thing wait until the first class and see what the instructor says. It isnt uncommon for them to say that you dont even need a book for the course. There might even be copies available at the campus library.

That
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LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

I like how teachers always use the newest of books as well for their curriculum...I really wonder if Calculus 101 has changed in the past 50 years.

New editions add two new words or rearrange pages. It's so stupid. Then they act like you can't use old editions because the problems assigned will be on non-corresponding page numbers.
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Jen0125 posted...

LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

I like how teachers always use the newest of books as well for their curriculum...I really wonder if Calculus 101 has changed in the past 50 years.

New editions add two new words or rearrange pages. It's so stupid. Then they act like you can't use old editions because the problems assigned will be on non-corresponding page numbers.

My problem is that the teacher can't be like 'lets use the old edition that can be bought online for 30 bucks' (Granted I remember some teachers telling us to get old editions of certain books online, under their breath). The schools mandate the use of the new books becasue of what I assume are contracts. It's the best though when you buy a book for $150 or whatever and at the end of the semester when you go to sell them back, it happened to be their last month's usage and they would only offer you 2 bucks (or 20 cents) in return. I sold those effers on ebay for like 80 lol.
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I am just glad my department had the fucking decency to not use scam textbooks and just sell us teaching packages at printing cost.
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I think the writers of the textbooks have made PLENTY enough already, and plus, education should be really cheap, like textbooks are not.

I dunno, I feel if I cared about people learning, I would want them to be able to learn without spending a small fortune. I would seel an educational book for next to nothing if not nothing.
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Support your local bookstore. They need the money more than some mega corporation does.
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College textbook prices are such a scam.
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They still make kids actually buy full physical books for college classes? What bullshit.

Makes me glad I'm not in college anymore, and just another thing that adds to my overall regret of ever having gone to begin with...what a waste of time and money
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I ended up renting the textbooks on Amazon, because the text in my e-reader was too small, and it seemed like a pain to fetch my glasses every tiime I wanted to do some studying. I also felt like I would need to show my instructor a problem or concept I got stuck on sometime, because these are really hard books, and if I showed them a digital copy of the textbook that I'm using, it would not very likely not be seen as kosher, and I'm too paranoid to not let it get to me. So this topic kind of became moot.
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