<p>Just returned home from taking S back to school. We even went along to the bookstore when he picked up his books for this semester.
Thought I was going to have heart failure…he picked out his books for the 5 classes he has, many of them used books…and the bill came to $853.00!</p>
<p>That didn’t even include a t-shirt or notebook!! OMG! After picking up DH off the floor, we ventured home…with empty pockets! </p>
<p>Anyone else have that high of a bill? We didn’t spend that total for all of last year…wow…maybe I was just used to the $300.00-400.00.</p>
<p>That is high. Will any of the books cover next semester as well. I know that many science, math and language texts include the entire year’s material.</p>
<p>there are a couple threads on how people save money on books
I know they are high- my daughter is a bio major and the color plates with dna models and cd-roms can be quite expensive- her freshman year hum class had 18 required books just for first semester.
However most of her books were used all year ( and many she bought used- either at the bookstore which has pretty good prices compared to some- or at amazon/Powells online)
One bio text that ran to $130.00 we found at amazon for $24.00.
Don’t forget you can also sell them back at end of term and if it is really a hardship and the book isn’t going to be used that often, it should be on reserves at teh school library</p>
<p>My freshman D highschooler spent $610.43, but that not the record for a freshman, another girl spent 687.00, then we had to get the TI calculator and another 45 for paperbacks…</p>
<p>And just came back with school supplies…egad</p>
<p>For 6 classes (4 being AP classes), spent $1,030.00 for textbooks for my upcoming senior year. My mom wasn’t very pleased with my school’s bookstore, to say the least.</p>
<p>Perhaps I am naive.In Ca HS students buy their own textbooks?
At least here in a NY suburb, my obscenly high school district taxes pay for the texts…
In college, my D had some semesters of high book costs, some not.One really outragously priced book turned out to be used for three semesters (German).Science,engineering and business majors seem to have exraordinarily high book costs.
The calculator you used in HS will go to college with you…turns out to be a minor investment over the years used.</p>
<p>I would bet these are kids in private schools. </p>
<p>We usually had about $500 in books at our school, but that was for courses that last all year! It is hard to fathom paying these outrageous prices twice each year. And there was an interesting article in a recent Chattanooga paper about the publishers trying to squash the buying of used books by issuing “new” editions more frequently. Yikes!!</p>
<p>We looked on Amazon and purchased the books that we were sure were the correct edition…in most cases the new book was cheaper than the bookstores used copy. Occasionally we buy from a seller at Amazon if we are sure its the right edition, we can get it in time and with shipping its substantially cheaper.
Then we bought used from the bookstore. We reserved in advance and when we got there we looked at them and traded the poor copies for better ones…this way when we resell we can get a better price if we resell privately…(I think the bookstore just issues standard 1/2 price back)
At the end of each term, D. sells her books back and gets about 1/2 …I sold a couple through Amazon that she forgot to sell (hence we try to get good looking used copies)
We also take advantage of the book stores coupons…this year they sent a postcard offering $10 off $150 purchase. And then they tucked in a coupon for an extra $5 when you sell your books back.
We also use credit cards that offer cash back.
So all in all…our book prices end up being reasonable. </p>
<p>PS we also check to make sure that any book we buy used that includes a CD has it with it.</p>
<p>Our district spends twice as much as the suburban district closest to us, and more than any other district in the state. But, not only are textbooks distributed free, students get two copies of some of the heavier textbooks (one for home, one for school). My S got to keep a copy of some of the novels he read for AP-English also.</p>
<p>Momofthree: That article was spot on. My S needed to buy a new edition of a biology textbook although only one new chapter was added. The reason was that the numbering of the exercises had been scrambled and the prof did not want to spend the time doing a concordance between old and new versions (the exercises themselves were not different). The textbook came to $120.</p>
<p>I know folks need to make a buck, but that practice somehow just makes me feel a little sick, doesn’t it you? Ouch.</p>
<p>Angstridden, I really admire the way you have handled the book situation. I will try to learn from your efforts, and hope I can get S1 to cooperate as well. I think I will have a better chance since book-costs are supposedly going to come out of his summer earnings!</p>
<p>College textbooks should be available in on line editions with site licences purchased by the schools. There is no reason for all these trees to be cut up to produce many of these text books. Students registered for a course could download their copy, electronically bold face and highlight…How many versions of Samuelson Economics ended up getting printed…altered every few years to make the existing copies obsolete. It is a scam.</p>
<p>I would always ask the instructor if it i sreally necessary to have the latest edition.
For example in her year long course that required over 30 books- some of the books weren’t the correct edition, but it didn’t matter- other courses it may matter very much.
Her bookstore I also want to mention has some of the best prices that I have ever seen at a school bookstore. It lists the ISBN for books so that we could search elsewhere- but frankly many times we found that even using bestbookbuys.com that the Reed bookstore was within a few dollars, sometimes even cheaper than buying a book through a private seller on Amazon ( with possibly long shipping time)
( another thing about bookstores- I always look and see what texts are being used- tells you a lot about that class and possibly the school- do the profs choose new books every term? Do they use handouts of past lectures? Do they write their own books/use original source material?)
While books may seem expensive, they can be sold back or kept and used for a lifetime- extending their value. Compared to what we pay for gas or for a gallon of milk- I think books are still pretty cheap.</p>
<p>My daughter took a course at a local community college this summer. I was shocked at the price of the book and it was a SPECIAL EDITION FOR (NAME) COMMUNITY COLLEGE…give me a break…like they need a special edition.
Anyway you can bet we sold that book back as fast as we could when the term was over.
Many text books you can sell online through half.com and Amazon…but because of the amount half.com and Amazon take plus shipping…plus the fact that someone may claim it did not arrive (so you should buy delivery confirmation on pricier books) plus packaging plus it may not sell in time and possibly become an older edition thats hard to sell …it is easier to sell directly back to the book store.</p>
<p>the community college in our area is really bad for books- actually I should say the bookstore that the college contracts with is bad.
I have seen sticker prices for used books that are more expensive than the original price underneath at this bookstore.
When my daughter did have to take a class there we got the ISBN # and ordered elsewhere.</p>
<p>More and more, profs use coursepacks, made up of journal articles and excerpts from books. Because of copyrights, these can end up being rather expensive, and they tend to change every year to take into account different emphases in the course or the publication of newer materials, so it’s hard to resell them.
Reading a book or article on reserve is not always an option if the class is large. I was told recently that the number of copies of an article a library may put on reserve depends on the number of copies of the relevant journal it already has. So, if the class has 100 students, and the library only subscribe to one copy of the journal, it can only photocopy one copy of the article. Each student may make one duplicate, but the money and time invested in doing so is not inconsiderable.</p>
<p>I realize this may be more of a problem for students who are attending a large school, but some instructors make things easier for students, for example I had one course where there were packets of articles on reserve. For this course the different study groups in the class simply signed up to go to the library and take notes from the articles. I realize not everyone is going to be able to do this, and won’t be able to do this for every class. But my suggestions weren’t to reduce your costs to zero, but to reduce them where you can. Students can also let profs know when it is a hardship to pay $80 for a bunch of photocopies- at least a book can be sold, if not to the student bookstore, than to a student in another school where the texts aren’t changed every semester. But profs need to be questioned about what additional expenses that they are requiring students to incur. Why change editions every year, if nothing changes but the colors on the color plates?Tell them that you wanted to take their class, but can’t afford to because the texts are too expensive.
My younger daughters high school can’t afford books for everyone, so they distributed photocopied handouts which you had to flip over to read every other page. Very difficult for my daughter who has visual issues anyway. I went and found a used copy of the book for her and bought a few extra for the class.
My other daughters private high school just bought the needed books and added it to tuition with out checking to see if anyone had the books already.( although she marked up the books so much they weren’t any good anyway)</p>
<p>I found out about the one copy rule last spring, for a class of well over 150. I do believe that coursepacks are put on reserve; I don’t know if there are restrictions on those. I have heard of coursepacks costing over $100 anyway, because of copyrights issues.
Profs are not eager to assign a specific edition of books but they warn students if the pagination is different or if the numbering of problem sets is different. We found out that it would be tedious to 1. locate a copy of two different editions of the same textbook and 2. compare the numbering of problems; so we ended up buying the newer edition which was not available used.</p>
<p>There was a professor at Cornell, Dan Sisler, who used to put together a packet of mimiographed articles and lectures in a bound book form. He sold it at cost plus a couple of dollars that went to a world food program. He used paper back books for extra assigned reading…he was really empathetic to the plight of students…and the world’s hungry…I wish there were more people like him in education.</p>