College Textbooks. Where to buy

[Meresgi]

Starting up courses for Electrical Technology in a week and I need to purchase books. I ran over to the book store today and scanned the prices and laughed. No chance i'm paying 120$+ per book from the college store. Especially since the only book I did buy was the college's own book for a lab, wherein they printed out 150 pages from an inkjet printer, bound it in one of those clear binders you used in 4th grade reports and are now selling it for 11$. At my old college i used to just not buy books for most classes, but the courses I am taking have a lot of lab work so kind of have to buy the books now.

Anyone know of good sites to purchase text books for cheap? Also my brother in law said something about an App on the Ipad/tablets that allows you to download college textbooks? Not sure if that's free, or if I can get a student code to make it free/cheap as hell, like how you can buy student copies of software for like 80% off.

[dejet]

Can take a look at amazon. Think they have some shit coming out for the kindle(maybe ipad/android app it will work with) adding lots of textbooks or something this year.

Iv been taking the hit because I cant get to many online for a price that just seems to be worth it. Im sorta hopping that with more being turned into ebooks there is a shot more torrents to them may also start poping up. Get some solid use out of my eee pad if that turns out to be true.

if you find a place that is great pricing post it here, lol been looking for years.

[Ksandra]

I strongly recommend looking into renting books via like 340980394 websites online now (find the one that has yours + is cheapest).

For me I tend to be lazy about selling books back + if you buy it from the college store, you get to sell them back for like a whopping $2 or some shit.

I've gotten in the habit of finding them online to rent and that's usually really cheap. Either via ebook or actual book, they will rent then for like 180 days.

ebooks I usually get through here:

http://www.coursesmart.com

but obviously not every book is an ebook.

[Silenka]

Yeah, try not to buy from the college bookstore or even the stores that deal in buying back and reselling, they are usually overpriced. One time I went to a buyback/resale place near my college and bought a book for 25 bucks, peeled off the sticker and saw they bought it at Half-Price books for 14$, didn't bother peeling off the sticker, turned around and sold it for that much more at their own store, lol.

So, try the used books on Amazon (usually the cheapest you can reliably get) or look at your local Half-Price Books if you have one or anything like it, I recently found textbooks there relevant to my classes for extremely cheap (~7$ normally $70). I don't have any experience with e-books or e-book rentals so I couldn't help there but often people will upload textbooks onto torrent trackers.

[Talus]

I'd second renting books, unless it's something you think you'll want to hang on to as a resource in the future. Inevitably, if you buy the book and try to sell it back in the spring, because you forgot to in the fall, this is the conversation that ensues.

Student Clerk : How are you?
You : Good, you?
Student Clerk : Good.

You heft your box/bag of books onto the makeshift counter in the student bookstore/student center where the book buy-back is located. Student Clerk looks at your books, and either looks at a spreadsheet or enters them into the computer.

Student Clerk : I see you have the 5th edition electrical technology. We're not buying that, because the 6th edition is being published and it's being used next year. You've also got the 8th edition (blah blah), and the 9th edition is coming out for next year. I can give you $60 for the 6th edition (blah blah) because that hasn't been updated. (you paid $140 for it).
You: Oh... okay.

[Ksandra]

ya I've actually found some rentals to be cheaper than even amazon (not 100% mind you which is why you should check both). And if you buy it for $60 on amazon and they come out with a new edition you could be fucked on trying to sell it back.


Usually a good method I do is find the isbn number of the book and type that into google, and google will pull up lowest prices, start from there.

[Meresgi]

Found a site called http://www.textbooksrus.com/.

I can get all my books from them new and 1 used (very good) for 66$, compared to the 250$+. Not sure how legit the site is though. Anyone used them before? Do the books arrive fairly quickly or take 4 months?

[Julian]

I never buy books unless absolutely necessary.

Most classes I've taken don't even use the books, and the ones that do, usually only use it for HW.

If that is the case, either try to find the book online (you can EASILY find the books for big classes everyone has to taken: calculus, chemistry, etc. These are also usually the super expensive ones.), or, if that fails, make a friend and borrow his book for homework, or do homework with friends, whatever.

For smaller classes, if homework isn't very frequent (like, 4~8 or so hw assignments over the entire semester), you may be able to talk the professor into posting the actual questions, or scanning the hw pages.

If all of the above fails, either rent, or just look for it on amazon. I was stupid and bought books my first year, but for the past 3 years, I've only purchased two books. One was $40, and the other was $60. Considering I get paid extra financial aid money to cover book expenses, I think I did all right. (Sold them both back for around the same price, too. Since the ones you end up having to buy are weird/unique/uncommon/not too used books, you're not very likely to run into the new edition problem.)

I'll make a little semi-guide on how to find books online. I'll post it on a separate post.

[brisk]

chegg.com

I've rented books from here the last 2 quarters with good success. Never buying from the bookstore again unless its one of those custom made ones made by the professors for just the quarter only.

[Meresgi]

So how does the renting work? They just mail me the book and 180 days later I send it back to them via mail and that's that?

[Ksandra]

yap

[Meresgi]

Hmmm sounds like something I might try for this semester. Does Chegg ship fairly quickly? I found one of my books via a torrent online so that saves me 60$ right there, sadly I can't find the other 2.

[plue]

`I usually buy my books on www.abebooks.com, they sell the exact same thing you`d find in the store but sometimes a cheaper quality, or sometimes called International Edition. Usually ships from a third world country where likely copyright laws aren’t much of an issue. Just make sure that you get the right edition of the textbook, as I’d imagine returning it would cost you more than just throwing it in the trash.

[Ksandra]

Hmmm sounds like something I might try for this semester. Does Chegg ship fairly quickly? I found one of my books via a torrent online so that saves me 60$ right there, sadly I can't find the other 2.

I used course smart and ebooks which is instant, so I can't say for chegg. I believe you can pay extra for ups shipping through chegg though so if you're really worried about the first day try "buying" the book unti lyou get to w/e shipping choice screen and see if it's worth it.

[Julian]

HOW TO FIND BOOKS ONLINE

1. Check the usual torrent sites. Piratebay, demonoid, whatever. Chances are 95% of the time you wont find anything, but it's worth checking anyway.

2. This site, bookmark it. http://bib.tiera.ru/static You probably wont find it, but if you do, hey!

3. This is where the real fun begins.
First, try http://www.filestube.com Try searching the ISBN number, "Book name in quotes", include the author name if the book name is generic. Try different searches. You may find something here.

4. Get creative, and use google. Try searching "Book name" and author, and try adding "megaupload" "rapidshare" or "4shared" to your search term. If amazon or anything is being annoying, add "-amazon", and from here, just keep searching. If you don't find anything, adjust the search term.

5. If you can see a preview of the book on google books or amazon or something, you can try including chapter names in your search, and maybe also throwing in "pdf".

One time, I found a book because some random professor in some random university uploaded it to his website ("secretly" for his students to use, I guess) and I just grabbed it from there. Other times, the book just isn't online. :/

If you want, include book name/authors/amazon link, and I can try to see if I can find anything, if I'm bored.

[Mojo]

I'm an extremely frugal textbook buyer. Like people have already posted, the first thing you want to find out is how much your professor will rely on the book. Email them a few weeks before class starts to get a feel and ask them if an older edition will work (like if they assign their own problems, it should definitely work, but if they're pulling them from the book you'll want a current edition.) You should also look into international editions. If you are doing any math/science major, chances are there will be an international edition. They're typically the exact same book but just cheaper.

[Meresgi]

So Ksandra, do you get your ebooks on a laptop or do you have a kindle/ipad? I was looking up how much a kindle would cost me as some of these books I may want to hold onto since i'm doing a career field and the information in them I can use when studying to take my A+ and Cisco testing.

[Julian]

I'm an extremely frugal textbook buyer. Like people have already posted, the first thing you want to find out is how much your professor will rely on the book. Email them a few weeks before class starts to get a feel and ask them if an older edition will work (like if they assign their own problems, it should definitely work, but if they're pulling them from the book you'll want a current edition.) You should also look into international editions. If you are doing any math/science major, chances are there will be an international edition. They're typically the exact same book but just cheaper.

This, too. I basically wait until the first day/week of classes before I even consider spending time online looking for the book. International versions are usually also good, and usually only difference is page numbers, if anything. I've personally never bothered with international versions, because I just don't buy books, but I know people that have, and it usually works ok.

[Ksandra]

So Ksandra, do you get your ebooks on a laptop or do you have a kindle/ipad? I was looking up how much a kindle would cost me as some of these books I may want to hold onto since i'm doing a career field and the information in them I can use when studying to take my A+ and Cisco testing.

I have everything lol.

I have a nook, google netbook, and a regular laptop. Dependent on what looks better + what I need to do else with it (ie. netbook is best size/weight, but google is retarded and you can't use anything but a webbrowser on it) is what I usually end up using. Coursmart lets you look at the book online so for the most part I use my netbook. I avoid using the nook just 'cause looking at textbooks on that small screen is meh.

[Woozie]

I haven't paid for a book in years.

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