<p>Is it necessary to reserve my books for the fall or would it be fine to just go buy them toward the end of summer? I was thinking about driving to the school so I could pick them up myself and hopefully get one with minimal highlighting.</p>
<p>^We can buy used books in college? Where do we buy them from?</p>
<p>SkyGirl, I thought all colleges had used books? They sell them in the bookstore right next to the new books.</p>
<p>^I didn't know that! Thanks for the info, the books will be less expensive then, good to know.</p>
<p>If you actually want to save a decent amount of money, you'd be better served buying your books online. Just get the ISBN number and stick it into any website that sells books. The Amazon marketplace, half.com, textbooksrus.com and abebooks.com are places I buy from most frequently.</p>
<p>^ do you have a hard time selling them again when you're done?</p>
<p>I don't buy my books online because most people i know who've done that have either gotten the wrong edition by accident or had to wait like 2 weeks for them to be delivered and missed stuff for classes. I've always bought my books in local bookstores (not the campus one because they are more expensive than the other ones), and never had a problem getting one. Usually they have used copies of everything unless you have to get a new edition which means it's not going to be much cheaper online anyway (and you'll have to pay shipping for some heavy freakin books too, which is expensive).</p>
<p>You can frequently sell your books back to the bookstore at the end of the semester.</p>
<p>On most campuses I've been on, there are flyers that go up around the ends of semesters for people who want to buy books.</p>
<p>You can also always sell them online. I just got a great deal on a 4th edition of a book with a newly-released 5th edition, but I've also paid much better money for books that are still being used. You'll get more money for a lot of books if there's no highlighting and marking in the text, although a friend of mine who went to law school tells me that students there always want pre-highlighted casebooks.</p>
<p>Or you could keep them to refer back to later on. A lot of the books you'll read at college are really interesting.</p>
<p>@ OKgirl</p>
<p>I highly recommend Amazon and half.com. I bought my books online. I would always go to the university bookstore, look up the titles/authors of the required books, buy the books on Amazon, and have them shipped to my dorm. Do this a week before classes start. That way your books will arrive by the time classes start. In the meantime, if you have not received your books by the start of class, you can reserve a copy from the local library until your shipment arrives. This is what I did and had no problems in my classes.</p>
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^ do you have a hard time selling them again when you're done?
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<p>I don't sell my books back since I'm in engineering and I tend to need early textbooks for later classes.</p>
<p>However, I do know websites such as textbooks.com will buy books back, though I have no idea what their rates are like.</p>
<p>do not buy books from the school!!!</p>
<p>thats a no no</p>
<p>It's hard to sell books back for any good price. You can either go the easy route and sell them to the bookstore which will give you something like half of what you paid, or you can sell them for more online - but it takes a lot longer.</p>
<p>At least, that's my experience. Also, buy the cheapest books you can from a used source that isn't the school. If you're going to sell them back make sure they're in decent condition, but if you can find them in pretty worn condition for really cheap you'll actually save money - even if you don't sell them back.</p>
<p>You can usually buy your books at the store (after registering the professor reserves a set number based on their roster, so every student should be able to get one). I buy mine on Amazon.com or Ebay most of the time, though. I</p>
<p>Check out bookfinder.com; you can type in the ISBN of the edition you're looking for and it'll search almost all websites with used books, total the price and shipping, and compare them. I've had great success with it. I would warn against buying books too early, however, because if you decide after break that you want to take a different course, it won't fit into your schedule, etc. you'll be stuck with a bunch of books you no longer want/need. Also, make sure you know the edition for books for literature courses; I remember my first semester of college I was so excited because I found all of the title I needed...then I got there and none of them were the correct edition, and the prof was very strict about it.</p>
<p>I've actually had really good luck buying my books on ebay. The new books on ebay are almost always the cheapest and I've been satisfied with the 10 or so books I've purchased on ebay.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is buying either the Teachers Editions or the International Editions. The Teachers Editions will have a few more pages here and there, usually with summaries, discussion topics, etc...The International Editions are literally the exact same as the US, except different covers.</p>