Buying Textbooks

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Those who go/went to college may know that textbooks are very expensive. I have about $600 of textbooks to buy (based on brand new prices at amazon). Are there cheaper places than Amazon where I can get quality books? How do you feel about the "Buy new from: $$" books that Amazon has? I bought a "Buy used from: $$" book once and it came it pretty bad shape. I want the book in new shape. So would these "Buy new from: $$" books come in pretty good shape? Buy those would save me about $150 from buy brand new books.
 
Search around... Check your schools forums too, people sell lots of books on there at my school. Some places will let you rent books as well. Used books should be fine too. I don't use my books a whole lot, but that may change as I get into higher level classes.

One thing to watch out for though, my school has a lot of classes with online homework and such that you need a special product key for. Those can't be bought used.
 
Ironically enough before my school rolled the cost into tuition and switched to online books for a lot of courses, I used to go to Amazon to get my books for way less than the bookstore carried them (used or not). I just never paid any attention to the new ones, only used. EBay might be another source, but don't hold your breath.
 
I'll probably end up ordering from Amazon. However I won't buy the brand new ones nor the used ones, just the new ones sold from people. My school's bookstore is very expensive. A book for Intro. to AE is $210 there ($150 at Amazon for it brand new).
 

+1.
After my first semester of College, and I noticed that I would never use the books again (except Psychology), I find it a waste of money. But of course, I sold them back to the school, but only got 40% back. So now I just go on chegg, and rent books for the semester. Saved me about $850 total for 3 semesters.
But if you are getting books online, make sure you find out what books you need, and get them before the semester starts. Chegg will take about 5 days - 2 weeks on average, for me at least.
 
Does your college have a used book store? Sometimes they do, it might be worth looking into.
 
I used EBay. I would go into the book store when I got my list and right down all of the ISBN numbers from the back of the books. Then go on ebay and search for the title and make sure the ISBN matches (make sure it's really busy and crazy though cuz they don't like to let you do this -- at least ours didn't so we also wrote down the prices and kept the ISBN sheet of paper under the price sheet). This way you get the same version as the one needed for class. In general though you can also get an older version and get by as long as it's not too old. I would get them for 60% off or more (they were used but since I only needed them for a quater it wasn't the end of the world). If you have a friend in your classes you can split the cost of books and share them. I've done that too.
 
On their online bookstore you select your classes and they give all ISBNs of the books you need. I looked at some paperback versions and that cut the price significantly.
 
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