Text books = extortion

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My Financial and Managerial accounting books both had the workbook built into them. You had to tear the pages out to use them!
I keep the books that make a good reference. I got $120 back on 2 books last quarter, one of them I used for two quarters. Most of the upper division courses I've taken the teachers have reference material available and make up their own curriculum so there are not too many expensive books to buy.
 
Originally Posted By: Audi Junkie
This is what we abandoned the Soviet System for?


Some of the translated Russian engineering textbooks are very good, very detailed, and very cheap (Orlov's books on machine design are good).
 
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Originally Posted By: MarkC
Just keep them, in 20 years, you can look back at them as souvenirs.


That's what my nursing friends did. Between him being a nurse anesthetist ..and her having a Phd. in Nursing (a doctor of nursing
54.gif
)..they've got a library. They add to it annually due to continuing education requirements.


cha..CHING! I bet they make some good muhla. with those textbooks, when I finished school, I wanted to burn them. ah, memories
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My wife took that same accounting class last year while working on her Masters degree. She hated that class. I don't see why textbooks come in CD/DVD format.
 
"The colleges and universities are in an unholy alliance with the publishers.

Amorality at its core."

And now they are in cohoots with private lenders. I am in school as well this stinks. One of my professor only using public online freeware sources for readings. This is true intellectual democracy. I believe in intellectual property but a side of me know say its morally questionable to put a price on knowledge and education. Education is power, and pricing people out of power is IMO unjust.

My books for last semester 400$

In comparison, my auto maintence costs ... 45$ for lube oil filter. What a spread.
 
But your future employer is going to reward your education and knowledge with more money.

Surely you are prepared to give that knowledge for nothing.
 
Quote:
but a side of me know say its morally questionable to put a price on knowledge and education.


This is what I say to my school board. They say to me, "How can you put a price on a good education?". I say, "I don't. You do. Your teacher association does. The publishers do. The vendors do. The contractors do. The construction contracts you sign off on do. Where are those interests "selfless and giving nature" that you seem to reserve for me?"
 
Our education system is warped in many ways from primary school on up. The fact that parents have to worry about what school to send their kids to just so that *damage isn't done* (we don't even worry about excellence anymore), is very perverse and one of the reasons we have so many problems in society. Textbook pricing is the least of my worries (and yes, I have done more than my share of contributing to the publisher profits).
 
My college bookstore claimed they 'are here to provide the best service and price for students'... Yeah right sure... How come everything costs more here? They claim lower overhead. They claim the ability to bulk buy and get a price break... How come everything costs more here?

One text I recall, we went (20 of us) looking for outside the college.. A local downtown bookstore got it for us for sixty less dollars than the college bookstore that is there to supposedly serve us.

Alex.
 
Quote:
got it for us for sixty less dollars than the college bookstore that is there to supposedly serve us.


You just misinterpreted the sign that said "Self Service".
 
I hate buying textbooks. Fall semester of 07 I had to buy a textbook for a Intro to Psych class and it costed $100 but when I went to sell it back the book store wouldn't buy it because they have too many already. I never lifted a page of that book either because the professor provided Powerpoint slides for her lectures and I pretty much studied off of those and did well.

I'm currently taking summer classes and bought some books through Amazon and Ebay and some from the bookstore. All the books total were $143.44, that's including shipping. If I were to buy all of them from the bookstore it would have been $303.36 in comparable condition.
 
Asian,

Thats why you have to wait until the second week of class to see if the teacher is actually going to use the book.

I once bought a book for a Speech class and the first day of class she said we had to buy the book, but the very next week she says that the book isn't necessary cause our grade will consist of all our speeches.
mad.gif
 
Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
Asian,

Thats why you have to wait until the second week of class to see if the teacher is actually going to use the book.

I once bought a book for a Speech class and the first day of class she said we had to buy the book, but the very next week she says that the book isn't necessary cause our grade will consist of all our speeches.
mad.gif



Yeah, I learned my lesson after that.
 
I was tired of getting burned by my university's bookstore so I've been doing most of my business on Half.com. I both buy my books and sell my books there. And I know what you mean about not using books. It's actually very rare that I ever need the textbook.
 
Originally Posted By: tdpark
i used to publish college text books. The economics of book publishing are aweful- high overhead, high development costs, low profit margins, high inventory costs and on top of that, they have to take returns on everything. I once had a bookstore return books that were 5 years old and we had to give them credit.

Blame your bookstore too as they make a nice profit on the markup- anywhere from 20-50%

That's the side of the story we don't see in our anger over these costs.
 
I've been doing pretty good so far with all my college/grad school books. My rule is usually:

1) Never buy a new book when used is around or online
2) Half.com or Amazon international edition
3) If all else fail, buy a new book and sell it immediately when you are done.
4) Books that need to have worksheet teared out, you buy used (almost for free in those case) and ask your friend to xerox the worksheets for you.


Books are usually refreshed every 3-4 years. In those cases if you are forced to buy new, you are the first run, and can sell for a high premium immediately after. If you hit the time that they refresh, usually there are plenty of old books around and prices are pretty cheap to begin with ($50-60 for a $200 new book). In those cases, you don't loose much.

Either way, expect about $30-60 cost for each book to begin with, as a rental fee.
 
I just pulled my circa 1968 Vector Mechanics for Engineers (Dynamics) by Beers and Johnston off the shelf. The price sticker in it say $7.95 and that was new. In inflation adjusted 2008 dollars that would be $49.21.

One reason it is a lot cheaper than new books is because then the publishers didn't churn out trivially revised books every 2 or 3 years to force people to buy new books. Another reason is that the book is smaller than it's modern counterpart because it isn't full of pretty pictures. It has an adequate amount of diagrams and a few black and white pictures where needed.
 
Originally Posted By: XS650
I just pulled my circa 1968 Vector Mechanics for Engineers (Dynamics) by Beers and Johnston off the shelf. The price sticker in it say $7.95 and that was new.

My Kinematic Analysis of Mechanisms was $9.50
frown.gif
 
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