Many of us are starting a new semester right about now and we all know how much buying text books suck. Just figured we can try to save each other money by making a list of websites where you can get your books for cheap. I've bought 4 text books this week from 4 different web sites. i've found price differences of over $100 for the same book at different sites. No single site will have the cheapest prices for all of your books, but if we make a list it will be easier to compare the different sites.

This week I've bought books from:

abebooks.com
ecampus.com
biggerbooks.com
amazon.com

 

heck, now you tell me, i just paid 560 bucks for my books.

 

Good idea. Just a little late for this semester for me. I haven't bought any online so I can't help there.

 

Last spring semester I tried the Ebay buying and selling... I pretty much got ripped off on the selling part, the buying part I saved about $70. By the time the auctions were done it was too late to sell them back to the book store on campus... so I was stuck with them and for the most part they did finally sell back, just not for what my book store would give for them. So, Ebay is good for buying, but selling them back pretty much isn't worth it.

I only spent $300 this semester, last semester was more than $700 though.

 

half.com... used em in the past

 

I try to keep all of the books in my major. Those are usually the most expensive ones anyway.

Last semester i had a Statistic book that i paid like 90$ for, and went to return it at the end of the semester, and the lady at the one book store said they couldnt give me any money for it, but would be happy to recycle it for me, and i told them i'd rather take pleasure in burning it. You should have seen the look on her face. I went to another book store and they wound up giving me 1$ for it, and i used that money to buy a Dr. Pepper. What a good deal huh? Pay 90$ for a book and after 4 months its worth a bottle of pop? Absolute crap!

Oh well, all the books in my major i find pretty interesting. LIke the Automotive Service by tim gilles has alot and i mean ALOT of very usefull info in it. Then my Material Processing book by i dont know who has alot of neat stuff in it too like cutting speeds and feeds and stuf like that. I figure i might eventually like to have them for a job one day. All the english and garbage like that gets sold back or burned (or exchanged for a bottle of Dr. Pepper)

 

my community college are making their own books now. which means i can only get it from their greedy campus book store or a used one down the road

 

The most useful thing that a book got me was that I was using my Environmental Hydrology book for reference material for work and my boss saw it and I got a pay raise because I had taken this hydrology class, not that I really know anything about hydrology but kind of a nice thing to happen. I usually keep the cool books I have. Statistics can go right on down the line.

 

I usually pay under $200 for 4 books. I usually get $120+ on resale, so its not that bad.

 

I usually use amazon and I've had pretty good luck with them.

My school is also into having teachers write the books for classes and then the only place you can buy them is in the bookstore where you get totally ripped off. That sucks!

 

Or they are like my chemistry class and the professor decides to use an abridged version that only has selected chapters, it costs more than the mainstream book and you can only buy it from the bookstore, and to top it off, they change it every year so you can't sell it back to the bookstore...

 

Thats another thing that keeps screwing people at my school...new editions! Every year a new edition comes out for a book and the prof switches to use the new one so we can never sell our books back!! Man thats irritating! And the sad part is that you can't even sell them to people you know still have to take the class because most of them think they'll be lost if they don't have the edition the prof has!