<p>When is the best time to order textbooks? Are there usually an abundant number of books for most classes?</p>
<p>Probably after the class begins, so you can see if you will even need the book. After my 1st year, I hardly ever bought books because the lectures notes provided by the teacher was enough. Some classes you may already know that you need the book, like calculus if the TA assigns HW from it.</p>
<p>I mostly used half.com . Amazon marketplace is probably also good.</p>
<p>chegg.com is where it’s at. i’ve saved almost $600 by renting the textbooks for Spring 2010 and Summer 2010. Organic Chemistry books are like $250 each to buy lol, which is insane</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I forgot about chegg because it wasn’t around when I was an undergrad. It also seems like a popular alternative to buying the books.</p>
<p>Chegg is great- we use them for all of our books. If my kids decide they want to keep a book for a refence book later, we can purchase the rental. Customer service is very good.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how the bookstore rentals compare to chegg? I know it is a fairly new feature.</p>
<p>the thing about renting books is that it frequently costs more than the spread you’d lose if you sold your book at the end of the semester. dont rent your books unless you actually think it’ll save money.</p>
<p>get the books during the first week of class.</p>
<p>I agree it’s usually best to wait until classes start to buy the book. That way you can get a feel for whether a) you’ll actually need the book, b) whether the book is just a reference (if there’s no homework from it, you can buy an old edition or an international edition, often at like a 90% discount) </p>
<p>I only recommend the UF bookstore as a last resort, I usually check abebooks.com and other sites. I never rent, sometimes I wanna keep a book (it’s actually useful enough that I could see having it in my office on the job) and if not I will usually sell to another student and recoup around 90% of my cost. Some bookstores around town also offer renting, but I still wouldn’t do it.</p>
<p>I was able to find an esoteric nuclear engineering textbook a couple weeks after classes started. If you’re willing to hunt around gainesville, you will find the books you need, no matter when.</p>
<p>If we buy the books from somewhere like half, are we able to sell the books back to the bookstore?</p>
<p>Buyback at the bookstore is garbage. Wanna get 12 dollars for a book you spent 150, go to the bookstore.</p>
<p>Especially since you can turn around and sell it somewhere like amazon marketplace for… like, 150.</p>
<p>Once you register for classes email your professors (info should be available online) and ask about the books. Usually they are more than happy to give you information, some may even advise you to not purchase the book. This just happened to me in one of my humanities classes.</p>
<p>However, once you know what books you need I advise getting them as early as possible. Renting is a fantastic alternative, especially for your gen ed classes that you don’t really care about (books you don’t want to keep).</p>
<p>Chegg.com is a great resource for renting, purchasing, and selling back textbooks. I’ve personally saved a little over $500 dollars, and I’ve saved close friends a bunch of money as well.
Also, when you use Chegg.com enter code CC128956 and get (if renting) 5% off your total, or (if selling a book) 5$ added to your total.</p>
<p>I strongly recommend Chegg.com, and if you are worried about not needing the book, Chegg has a 30-day any reason money back guarantee. So if you end up not needing the book, you send it back in the box it came in with the pre-paid shipping label, and they credit the money back to you (pay pal or send a check).</p>
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