$130 for 1 stupid textbook vent!

[dis-happy]

http://dltj.org/article/textbook-disclosure-rules/


July 1st, 2010 is the date that schools have to comply with the new law. Yay!

 

[MomofKatie]

Yes, textbooks are such a racket!! When I was in college, I used to get together with classmates and we would buy 1 book- we'd split the cost between all of us, and then make bound copies for everyone. It wound up costing us far less than if we each bought our own copy.

I like the idea of renting texts, especially for electives and freshman level courses (it is nice to be able to keep texts pertaining to your major).

 

[Corwin12]

I just graduated with my MBA: I bought International Versions of textbooks. They are usually softcover and use a cheaper paper, but ... the content is identical. I saved a fortune.

 

[quentina]

1 word....EBAY. I pay an averge of 35$ for books that cost over $200 through book store.

 

[charming23]

Thanks for the chegg.com website. I was really dreading buying books this semster as the total would be over $500. I am going to rent them for less than $200. It does not bother me that I can not highlight or write in them as I usually don't anyways.

 

[AllisonK]

My French book last semester cost $195. Thankfully, I am taking French II this semester. I have the same professor and she is using the same book. It doesn't "sting" as much knowing I am getting two semesters out of it.

Mhmm. I just bought my book for Italian 3 yesterday... $99 USED. Luckily it's the book for Italian 4 as well... But my work book/lab book was $67. THAT stung. I rented my other 4 books for my 3 journalism classes on Chegg for about $109, though, so that wasn't bad.

 

[cinderellascastle29]

Nothing is worse when one of your electives that have nothing to do with your major, yet are forced to take to get enough credits to qualify or full-time status, etc., costs more than a book for your major! I quit buying from the bookstore and save a significant amount of money buying off Amazon.

ETA: just to prove how much the bookstore 'rips you off' I did a tally on the school website vs. Amazon. 11 books from the school bookstore cost me 394.55, and Amazon only cost me 151.54. Thank goodness for Amazon!

 

[golfgal]

http://dltj.org/article/textbook-disclosure-rules/


July 1st, 2010 is the date that schools have to comply with the new law. Yay!

Everyone we have talked to from DS's school said to use Amazon/Barnes and Nobel, etc. vs the campus bookstore. Now I know we will be able to get this information so we can use those sites.

 

[paintnolish]

Books for 4 classes cost me almost $700 this semester. That is a new record. My Spanish book package (workbook, reader, and text- all soft-back) was $265. Do I win?

 

[WDWBarb]

This is one of the reasons that I am a huge fan of ebooks and I am hoping beyond hope that they take over the textbook world. It makes MUCH more sense to pay less than $500 for a Kindle DX and download textbooks instantly (and updated versions!!) and pay MUCH less for them.

It would open up the textbook world to many more options (they don't have to deal with the big publishers!) and ebooks SHOULD cost a lot less. Think of the trees that would be saved!

Also, carrying around all of those heavy textbooks to and from classes is terrible for your back. My DD has Scoliosis and it causes her a great deal of pain. She goes to PT just to help her carry her backpack. And most often she carries that big book to class and it's never used or referred to.

 

[jme829]

I wish ours would have done it this way. DD16 just started her dual credit course today. I got the paperwork from the school counselor (she was in charge of assigning all the students to the courses and took care of registration). We thought we got lucky because we found a copy of the $120 textbook that we needed for $40 on Craigslist from a local student who took the course.

So, DD texts me from class about an hour ago to tell me that the counselor wrote down the wrong course number on our registration paper and we bought the wrong book.

I pulled out the paper just to double check ~ yep, sure enough, the paper says History 250 and it's actually something like History 152. I am fuming right now.

Luckily, I bought the other one used and deeply discounted but what a hassle. DD hates being unprepared for anything in school and I could tell she was really stressing over it.

Sounds just like my dd...she freaks out if she is missing something..!

As I said above, the college she is attending, she won't have to pay for her books even as an actual college student. Nobody pays for books, it's rolled into the tuition which is actually very reasonable.

The annual tuition for this year is $6375 I'm sure it will go up some before she starts as a freshmen in 2011, but from what I have seen from other colleges in our area its still going to be a bargain! When we lived in Ohio , the Univ. she was planning on going to was that for a quarter!

I am so much more relaxed now that we may actually be able to afford sending her to college! lol

 

[DisneyForLife]

I have had sons in college going on six years now. After this coming semester, the last one will graduate.

The price of textbooks on top of tuition, fees and everything else you have to pay for is so unfair. I have had great luck with half.com. I order and buy and usually come out even or even make a bit more. It has helped a lot and I highly recommend it. Half.com is very easy to use both purchasing and selling. It really helps to defray some of the costs of textbooks.

 

[golfgal]

Sounds just like my dd...she freaks out if she is missing something..!

As I said above, the college she is attending, she won't have to pay for her books even as an actual college student. Nobody pays for books, it's rolled into the tuition which is actually very reasonable.

The annual tuition for this year is $6375 I'm sure it will go up some before she starts as a freshmen in 2011, but from what I have seen from other colleges in our area its still going to be a bargain! When we lived in Ohio , the Univ. she was planning on going to was that for a quarter!

I am so much more relaxed now that we may actually be able to afford sending her to college! lol

I had to check out their website as DD has a friend at River Falls and she was paying a lot more. The $6375 is just for tuition but you add in living costs and a meal plan and it is double that-just a heads up on that. That puts it in line with many of the schools in the area-still on the low side though so that is nice. Also, the prices listed are 2009 prices--DS's school went up $3000 from '09 to '10 so chances are UW River Falls will go up as well.

 

[rigs32]

When I was in law school, I MADE money on my textbooks. I bought used or older editions on half.com. I underline rather than highlight, so in my description when I resold the books, I made their condition clear and emphasized that they were perfect for people who did highlight.

All I did was photocopy the table of contents (or download it from the publisher's website) and compare the page numbers on the syllabus to my book's ToC. A few minutes work saved me $100s.

 

[Art 1]

It's been a long time since I graduated from college and in the back of my mind I know textbooks were just as expensive but I just spent $400 bucks for 3 lousy textbooks for my son, who is a freshman.

Jeez, what a racket....

Thanks for letting me vent...

You are lucky, we pay up to $1000 a year for our daughters books and that's for high school.

 

[AshleyW]

Tell me about it!!!!

What makes it worse for me is my school does mostly special editions of a textbook specific to my school so I can't find them on any textbook resale site!

I spent $133 on a book 1/2 inch thick conveniently, they get new editions all the time and there are hardly any used books left at the bookstore.

Nothing is worse though when I spend $100 on a textbook and a teacher almost never uses it i.e. my $133 Bio 112 book!

Bio lecture: $133
Bio lab: $2 packet
Writing: $79 book & $94 book
Math: $179

Considering my books only totaled $487, perhaps I got off easy as this is for 13 credits.

I know A&P classes won't be the same though

Good luck. My A&P 1 bundle was $350. My A&P 2 bundle for this semester was $275. I think half of my financial aid goes to books every semester... but I'm quite thankful that our local hospitals have loan forgiveness benefits for RNs when you sign on with them.

 

[Pigeon]

This is one of the reasons that I am a huge fan of ebooks and I am hoping beyond hope that they take over the textbook world. It makes MUCH more sense to pay less than $500 for a Kindle DX and download textbooks instantly (and updated versions!!) and pay MUCH less for them.

It would open up the textbook world to many more options (they don't have to deal with the big publishers!) and ebooks SHOULD cost a lot less. Think of the trees that would be saved!

I'm not seeing that. There is nothing to stop other publishing houses from trying to get into the print textbook market. Traditional publishers will increasingly offer electronic versions of textbooks, but they are going to maintain, or if possible increase their margins. And the self published or institution specific textbooks are an unbelivable scam.

I'm an academic librarian and we hoped electronic journals would be cheaper than print journals. Guess what? In general, it's a wash. A few are a little cheaper but most aren't.

Yeah, trees would be saved, but energy is consumed and batteries required in the digital versions such that I don't think they are all that much better environmentally.

 

[tasha99]

I'm an academic librarian. Today was our usual first day of the semester, with hundreds of students coming to the library to see if we had their textbooks. As a rule, we don't buy textbooks, period. If you are a student, you can ask your faculty member if they can put a copy on reserve if they have an extra.

We will not get textbooks through Interlibrary Loan for students. It's just too big of a dissatisfier. In most case, you can't find the textbook at another library, and if they do have it, it gets recalled immediately and your student has to send it back just when they need it. ILL loan periods tend to only be a couple of weeks, and it can be difficult to get the books back to the loaning institution if students won't return them.

We tell students their best bet is to rent, shop around or share with a friend. Our university didn't used to publish the book list, but after a lawsuit, we do now.

The whole thing is just an incredible racket.

I'm so glad my school does do interlibrary loan for text books. It might not work for large classes, but for small grad classes that are taught at only one other school in the state, it's been great. I had a class last term that had 3 required books and one optional--all with only a chapter or three used out of each. Most of what we read are research articles anyway, so I can't see spending a lot of money on books. I was very grateful that one professor put the text on reserve. I needed it for about 10 minutes a week to pull a chart or some data out of it, and I would have been kicking myself if I'd paid for it.

 

[Abbie]

Thanks for the chegg.com website. I was really dreading buying books this semster as the total would be over $500. I am going to rent them for less than $200. It does not bother me that I can not highlight or write in them as I usually don't anyways.

You can't write in them but you can actually highlight. They just request no "excessive" highlighting, like every other line! For what you save this isn't a problem for us.

 

[Cindy B]

I loved using my township library as well. Check your local town library because I used interlibrary loan for textbooks there as well as the school library (different systems!)

I got many summer texts there. I was worth paying a $2.00 overdue fee for a few extra days vs. paying $130 for the book.