It's the beginning of a new semester. For the past week our bookstore on campus has been packed by idiots willing to pay $100-$150/textbook. If I would have bought my textbooks from there I would have ended up spending $500-$600. Instead, I shopped around online, and spent $75 on books for 16 credits worth of classes.

Why do people buy their books from the bookstore? If someone was able to fill out their college application, I'm positive that the person has enough knowledge to buy a book on Amazon or ebay. The only explanation I can come up with is they're not spending their own money or they're spending money they have not earned yet.

 

When I went to school (pre-internet) we had to buy the books at the college book store. it sucked! Sometimes you could buy a shitty used one for about 60% of the NEW price, but even in 1990 I probably spent $500 per semester.

I have 2 half brothers in college...wonder if they know they can get the same books online?

 

I would purchase as many used books off the internet as I could.. Alternately there was a bootleg used bookstore near campus that has good deals. Also, always resell your books online.. never sell them to the bookstore. I could generally make back 80% of my books funds every semester.

 

I used to go to the libary (school or local) and do an "inter-library loan request" for each book I needed and renew them throughout the semester. I didn't spend anything on books.

 

^ that wasn't possible at our school, if you took out a textbook you had to put it back in, no renewal. if it was still there, cool, but often times it wasn't as a lot of students had that same idea.

I used half.com during the latter half of college, up until then my book money came from an account my parents had set up after my grandmothers passing, so they encouraged me to buy at the bookstore (as they were the ones with the funds). I always wanted to buy online but they thought it was "easier" to buy from the bookstore. Their money, not mine, I didn't really have a choice. (Silly, I know, they've learned with my sister though tahnkfully!)

Through AKPsi (business fraternity I was in) I found that it was super convenient to sell my books to underclassmen. I'd go to the bookstore, price what they'd give me if I sold my book back, looked around online for the avg selling price on half.com, looked at the new figure and usually came to a mutual agreement somewhere around the half.com price, a bit higher for things like econ and account books, less for HR, marketing and finance books.

Worked well for me

 

It's not always true though. There were times when I was able to get more for my books at the bookstore than I would've online.

 

then the bookstore ripped everyone off on used book sales My school had three book stores so I guess there was competition on used book sales, and the buy back prices were kept low to lower the resale price.

 

It's crazy. A new book is $120, the used one is $100. When they're buying it back, they'll give you maybe $50-60 at most. Now if I pay $40 for the book, you bet I'll be selling it back to them for $50-60.

 

Geez I remember getting like 12 bucks back for an 80 book or something, only because they were coming out with the "First and a Half" Edition of the book

 

Some of my professor's were complete money grubbing pricks. My law professer wrote his own book and would update it yearly. No online exchange had it and resell was pitifull. The bookstore charged us $100 for the book