Buying Used Books

<p>Having already attended orientation and signing up for classes, it seems a good idea to start buying used books for next year. Unfortunately, the descriptions I get via Student Link are rather vague (i.e.ETHICS:THEORY+CONTEMP.ISSUES
MACKINNON, CONCISE WADSWORTH HANDBOOK, KIRSZNER). Though finding these books on Amazon isn’t all that difficult, I’d rather not make any purchases not knowing what edition we’ll be using… Can people who already took the following classes tell me what textbooks they used?
I’m in:
~Intro Microeconomics (Idson)
~Intro to Ethics (Griswold)
~Writing Seminar (Powers) <em>The Artist and Society in Russian Prose</em>
~Mgmt As A Systm (Morrison/Wilson)</p>

<p>-The Used Coot66</p>

<p>You won't know until you get to the class since the Professor's may have changed the editions from previous semesters. My advice is to email you Professors and ask for the ISBN numbers and/or editions of the books. That's usually worked for me so you can order the books before school starts. </p>

<p>Oh and about Management books, you will be buying a lot of those books from the SMG copy center. It sucks. They are custom books and change each year so they can't be resold.</p>

<p>That's the main thing that I dislike about SMG. You have to do a lot of case studies and the school passes on the costs of the copyright to the students. I actually paid $90 for a stack of papers about an inch thick with a rubber band around it last semester.</p>

<p>I'm pretty sure there is an option on the BU barnes and noble to buy used books too.</p>

<p>To emphasize, you need the ISBN # and then you can check half.com and other sources.</p>

<p>coot66- So you are going to BU?????</p>

<p>lostandfound5:I'll probably e-mail my future professors. But it's seems a little early at this point, right? And the custom book thing seems to majorly blow.</p>

<p>LaurenP: They do, but Amazon is a lot cheaper.
**
Lergnom**: You'd think they'd give the number on the page where it tells you what books you need, wouldn't you?</p>

<p>momnipotent: Yup!</p>

<p>-The Cheaper Coot66</p>

<p>When you goin to orientation coot?</p>

<p>According to his first post, he's already been to orientation.</p>

<p>Yeah it would be nice if they put the ISBN number on the page but Barnes and Noble doesn't exactly want to encourage people to NOT buy through the store.</p>

<p>And nah it's not too early. They've obviously already picked the books so they know what theyre using. Some professors can take a long time to get back to you during the summer.</p>

<p>Although the cost can be annoying, SMG would not be what it is if it followed the cookie-cutter curriculum you find in your everyday business textbooks. I think the improved material is worth the extra cost.</p>

<p>I ordered last fall from half.com. It's ebay with a guarantee. With no bad comments about the seller, I felt I was safe. Turned out to be a scam. The seller wasn't legit, but since I ordered at the same time as the rest of the buyers-noone knew.</p>

<p>When book was supposedly in transit, I went onto the website and suddenly there were tons of complaints from buyers who had ordered just before I had, about the seller. Half said they couldn't do anything until I was past the last shipping arrival date. (Looking back, I should have figured out that the shipping time range was a bit excessive, but I figured it would arrive sooner, not later, so I didn't care.) When the book was officially late, I tried to contact them, but they had removed the seller and it was difficult to contact them about a transaction that could no longer exist because the seller didn't exist. Finally, I reached someone who took my info and about 2 months later, they issued a credit for the amount.</p>

<p>Whole thing took about 3 months, lots of wasted time, and by the time we got the credit, my son had survived that long without the book that he determined he could survive the rest of the year without it.</p>

<p>DS ordered all of his texts from some online discount book place (usedtexts or something) every semester except his first! DD did the same (different university).</p>

<p>team_mom-
what a bad experience! We ordered from Abebooks last semester with no difficulty. Most books on the site are $1.00 and the shipping runs from 3 to 6 bucks.</p>

<p>We order used books from many different sites and had only one bad experience on half.com. Unfortunately it was an expensive oceanography book. We never received it and the seller never answered our emails. Ebay did refund our money. Eventually we heard from the seller (a college student) who apologized that he didn't have internet access for several weeks (???!!!).</p>

<p>...I'm sad. None of the professors I sent e-mails to responded. Even though they probably have busy summers/lives, I want to get my books second-hand and need the ISBN...</p>

<p>-The Sad Coot66</p>