Amazon College Book Rentals.

pearsall001

My son needed a Biology book for college so I go to Amazon to check out prices...$180.00 new, a tad cheaper used. Then I see the "Book Rental" section. I check it out & it's only $26.00 for the semester. It has to be back by 6/3 which isn't a problem. You just print out the label for "FREE" return shipping & pop it in the mail. I'll be damned, I didn't know anything about that service before.

simm

We bought my daughters books through amazon last semester and sold them back to them for a much better price than I would have ever expected. We are renting this semester. Anything to save a few bucks on college costs. I have another daughter starting next year. Really feeling like I am in the poorhouse.

boston1450

My wife buys books new & used. It is very expensive. Some are 300.00 a book. We are always looking for shortcuts-such as this. We feel the PAIN..Great info

boston1450

One of our kids just got a used book & it was missing some pages she has to bring it back this week. I guess that happens. Sure enough they wrap it up so you cant check. They are pretty good a out it though-thankfully

cnh

I don't know what your colleges and Universities are doing, but where I teach I can "request" that the bookstore try to find USED copies at lower prices and they will usually comply if they're available. Students are also allowed to sell books back when they are done with them.

There was a time in my student career in NYC when Barnes & Noble on Broadway and I believe 18 St. Used to have a WONDERFUL Annex across the street that had almost every college text one could want at really cheap used prices. Alas, those days are gone. Half of my library was bought there.

In any case, I highly recommend saving what you can by whatever means necessary. Books in the Natural Sciences are some of the worst, and let me tell you a dirty little secret about them. I have a LOT of colleagues in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. And though there is NEW information that is sometimes added to texts, a lot of textbook authors simply "repaginate" their texts each year, add the bare minimum, just so they can claim it is a NEW edition and get people to adopt the new book at an outrageous price! That's, well, I won't say what that is. But I'll tell you what it isn't: it's NOT scholarship!

cnh

[Deleted User]

I used to rent or get etextbooks from chegg. Return postage is also free.

Halen

jhracer3

if you want to save money on textbooks (especially the really expensive STEM ones) bigwords.com is where its at. They link you to importers that allow you buy the international version of US textbooks. Same exact content , usually in a softcover book with a different cover graphic. Normally prices are around 15-20% of the US bookstore equivalent. And thats to buy, not rent.

When you compare (purchase price used - used buyback price = money lost) vs rental price, I think the textbook rental option usually makes terrible financial sense.

coming from someone with about $5k in engineering textbooks sitting in my office.

badchad

Haven't colleges switched to e-books yet?

I'm amazed kids haven't found to get the e-books significantly discounted *cough *pirated*cough*.

jhracer3

I graduated in 2011, and very few textbooks were available in ebook format then. those that were available were widely pirated, both on bittorrent and private on-campus file sharing networks.

Pretty much all of the etextbooks I've seen are for core curriculum type classes, Physics 101,201,301, Calc I,II,III, Diff EQ, etc. And because those books are so popular, they're very easy to find used.

I found that the topic-focused engineering textbooks were the most expensive, at $250-$300 list, and I never found one available as an ebook.

The few etextbooks I used I didn't really like; because I tended to flip back and forth between problem sets, example problems, and content a lot, and thats hard to do on a digital device. I can't imagine trying to use one on an open-notes test, when time is critical. not to mention that no professor in his right mind is going to let students use kindles or what not in the test room.

Finally, I have a strong aversion to buying anything in digital-only format, because the file standards change too quickly. Whats to say that a textbook I buy now won't be unreadable in 5 years. I know my textbooks will be accessible forever.

exalted512

+ 1,000,000 on 'International Versions' We're talking about $300 books for $75...or cheaper if you go used. I used to buy them used, then sell them on Facebook for more than I paid for them for people taking that class the following semester.

Also, I'd email professors ahead of time and ask if I could use an older edition. A lot of the time, very little changes except the price. A used '3rd edition' would be about $125 and a used '2nd edition' would be about $15. It's ridiculous.

Up until a couple months ago, I still had a $100 still in packaging, brand new set of engineering paper back work books because we never used them and they stopped requiring that students get them the next year. This was from like 7-8 years ago, lol. They dont buy back work books anyway, but I might've been able to sell it on Facebook or something...Things like this piss me off. Especially when professors would make you buy THEIR book, which there is no used market on. Or when you get caught between editions and you have to buy the new edition (and there's no used since its a new edition).

Books are something that pissed me off...haha.
-Cody

jflail2

Oh the days of having to waste tons of cash on college books. CNH, I was chuckling in particular at the first part of your post. I remember the pain of selling back books that had "moved on to the next edition". So the calculus book I paid $150 for for example, was valued at $5 by the bookstore at the end of the semester. I think I'll keep that one and use it as paper weight, thank you verymuch.

Of course that was 92-94, before you could find anything you wanted on the internet.