Nonexistent ISBN and Custom text books

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I need 3 texts for the fall and I personally went to the school book store and wrote down ISBN, author, ed., etc. However, when I tried googling for them I could not find any of them. I am currently borrowing a friend's Calc book to review before school starts. I noticed that the ISBN is NOT what was listed on the tags of the shelves. I put the ISBN (on the back of the Calc bk) and instantly found the book on Amazon. I put the ISBN from the store and I found NOTHING. (I have tripled check the ISBN for accuracy).</p>

<p>The things is, I think that the Chem book is a loose leaf custom edition. The physics book I found online only through the title BUT I am not sure if the edition is correct. Its a 1k+ page book but at school its a whopping $245! At Amazon the price of a NEW book is only ~$185. However, the is apparently MANY editions, some with only 22 chapters while others that go from chap 23-45, etc. Also, he ISBN do NOT match at all. They aren't even close! </p>

<p>My question is: Is my inability to find my books b/c my school is using a custom edition? Would a school tell you that so you don't endlessly search the Internet? My math book is only ~$125 at the store and online, but the physics book is DOUBLE that and it is the same size... ARGH I already wasted a few hours...over the last few days. I may just end up buying at the book store.</p>

2

<p>You'd probably be better off writing down the title, authors, edition, and publication year if you're having trouble using ISBNs.</p>

<p>Also, lots of intro physics books have various sections like Newtonian, E&M, relativistic, and quantum mechanics concepts. So, they release them in various editions with a different amount of content to compensate for it.</p>

<p>You could always buy any physics book you want and then take out the reserved copy from the library and just photocopy the ends of each chapter so you'd have all of the problems from the latest edition on file.</p>

3

<p>it may be custom; my school does that with books as well (selected chapters put in the books). Email or ask the professor and you should hopefully get an answer.</p>

4

<p>Custom editions suck. All they do is pull a few select chapters out and call it a custom edition, but some of my books actually have other books in them (like my chem one has a study skills book lol). You should just ask the professor about it.</p>

5

<p>Alright, thanks. I'll go to the library to check out the course books (they limit it to only 2 hours) during Welcome Week.</p>