Soaring textbook prices
Classes start next Thursday for me, which means I’ll soon be spending hundreds on textbooks. I recall one semester at UM when I spent nearly $900 on books for four classes and barely cracked three of them. In fact, if anyone is interested in a never-opened Paleoanthropology textbook, let me know.
Anyway, ordering on Amazon has definitely kept costs down. I just get angry with the new editions that come out every year with minimal changes — perhaps the colors of a graph have been modified or some useless CD-ROM has been added. Last spring, I purchased a textbook that had just come out. I hated paying so much but figured maybe the buyback would be decent (yeah, right) since the course was only a couple months long. Nope. When I tried to sell it back, the manager told me a new addition was about to come out in the fall, so really, my new textbook was old. Two new editions in one year?! What kind of racket is this?
I know it’s tough everywhere and schools like Oakland Community College are looking for solutions. The Board of Trustees has requested that the College Academic Senate create a task force to explore ways of bringing book costs down. It’s about time that schools take a serious look at this problem — it’s a shame that these ridiculous textbook costs are preventing student enrollment.
Depending on my textbook costs, I may be selling one gently used kidney. I’ll let you know.
You need to find the international editions that “are not to be sold in America”, but are perfectly legal despite the disclaimer. Use Ebay’s Half.com. Last semester I cut my book costs from $400 to $180.
Great idea. I just saved a ton last semester on a textbook by purchasing the international edition.
I used textbookgenie.com to buy my textbooks and got them at 70% lower than what my campus book store was offering at. What is cool about the site was that it had all the course textbook bundles for my school. All I had to do was select from a list of books and click a compare button. The site looks brand new. I hope they survive. We are the ones that benefit most from a site like that.
The bookstores rip you off! I go to Penn State and i’ve been buying international editions. International editions are a good idea but sometimes they are very poor quality and the paper is so thin I can barely read a few pages before my eyes go crazy. I found that some international editions are high quality. I found a site this semester, http://www.thetextbookguy.com , that sells only high quality international editions. I bought two of my books and they were printed in the US on high quality paper, in color, and one was a hardcover. I wish I had found them sooner, saved $$$