Buying textbooks online

nontraditional
Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:03:05 +0000

What is your bookstore’s buyback policy?

Are you willing to sell on Amazon or a similar site?

Are the courses you’re planning to take ones that are offered every semester with all the relevant faculty using the same texts, or are they courses that are offered less frequently or are personalized by each instructor?

Will the courses be taught in the spring semester by adjuncts or new hires?

What condition are your books going to be in at the end of the semester?

What is the publication date on the books?

Are there new editions in the publishers’ pipelines right now?

Are faculty at your school required to use the most recent edition of a textbook, or to use a textbook no more than x years old?

Are there better translations of translated books due to come out in the near future?

Is there a really wonderful book on the same topic about to be unveiled?

Do you have classmates who will want to keep their texts so they can refer back to them?

Will you need the books right up until you take the finals, or can you part with them ahead of time?

You’re asking a question that really doesn’t have a clear answer. There are a lot of factors.