Best time to buy books

Pasbal
Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:48:50 +0000

I have yet to buy a textbook from the bookstore that wasn’t a lab manual. If you have to have a new copy, they are always cheaper elsewhere. If you don’t need a new copy, a used copy of the book (or an earlier edition, most professors will address first class whether the older editions are okay or not) is pretty much always available.

One of my professors made a point of telling us the first day that the older edition of the textbook would work just fine, as long as we remembered one tiny detail that had changed since the book was printed, which we were never tested on anyway.

Keep in mind that most sellers online ship books via Media Mail- which typically means the book will take a pretty long time (anywhere from 3-21 business days) to arrive to you. So if you are buying your books once the semester starts (waiting to see if they are really needed) just keep this in mind.