While the required textbooks for my kid’s first two years at prep school were by no means cheap, this year some of the required texts are really pricey (over $300 for a math text!? How is that even possible?). I’m wondering whether anyone has recently found some great new source for super-discounted texts and is willing to share the details… would be perfectly happy with a used text, as long as the ISBNs match…
Have you checked chegg.com? I got an algebra 2 text book to finish in the summer for about $4.99. Can’t guarantee the same price but it’s worth looking at.
Hope I helped
Maybe contact any friends who had the course last year to see if there are books they want to sell? I have also heard that Half.com or eBay sometimes have books with better prices.
After the first year, my kids bought and sold books between dorm mates and friends, saving a lot of $. Always sucked though when they’d make a textbook change to a first edition. Foreign languages costs always seemed to be the highest as it would come bundled with some software that couldn’t be reused forcing you to buy new at some astronomical price.
This was my Facebook status recently… FYI: Buying textbooks for boarding school is just like buying textbooks for college. $289 for this book, $307 for that one. I don’t know, maybe regular high school books are like that, too. But regardless, YIKES!
At least in my experience, public schoolers don’t buy their books.
Ours don’t “buy” but they “rent”. I found out the normal book bill around here is about $300/year for the public schools.
We just borrow them! We write our names and the teachers record who gets which book. Even if you lose it, they’re never $300.
Yes, no charge for public school books here. It is always a joy to make sure we have enough book covers for all the kids books in the fall. I can remember covering them in paper grocery bags. it was a shock to this previously public school Mom to see how much the textbooks cost. I was even more surprised to see how,small the box of books was when I picked them up at school. I couldn’t believe that the small box had cost 600$. I’m not looking forward to college books!
Seconding half.com. Ideally the prep school would have a facebook page where purchases of used books, like purchases of used uniforms, could be discussed.
Yes, my son’s AP textbooks are the same textbooks we use in college, so the costs range from $200 to $350 for new copies of the newest editions.
If it is allowed, get an older edition from ebay or elsewhere. Many Goodwill stores have ebay accounts and tons of books to get rid of. I tell my students all the time that they should not use the college bookstore, that they should use ebay and get an old copy of the textbook if possible.
That is, if you are not worried about your child being caught with an old book and being shunned for it.
I have found used textbooks on Amazon. Especially English books. Amazon sellers rate the condition of the book and I’ve found it accurate. Half.com has text books too sometimes. Google the ISBN and sometimes you can find other sites. There are a number of sites that sell used books. I was kind of surprised at the cost too.
I spent most of Saturday scouring five different web sites for the best book prices and I’m not even done!
We ordered ours all from Classbook.com. They will ship directly to school and offer “new” or “used” prices. It might be worth a look to see if your school is covered by that company… we always buy “new” for English class textbooks as making notes on passages is tricky if someone else wrote all over the book.
@london203, The prices on Classbook.com were what had me searching all the other websites. 
Maybe we just got lucky. All of her books totalled less than the price of one book mentioned above! I confess I did a broader search last year, but this worked well so we went with it… 
I actually received some books from upperclassmen when I got to school last fall, and for the coming year, I bought some and received some from other students who had taken the course before, and the remaining couple of books I purchased on Amazon. Spent about 120 dollars total this year.
So far, so good here. We actually haven’t got the final schedule yet, so haven’t purchased any books. BUT, English/history will be assigned once class starts (hello, Amazon!), Latin is less that $30, and the Biology is only offered on iPad, which is less that $20 (Not including, of course, the cost of the iPad I had to buy). I assume there will be a geometry book at some point, but nothing is listed now. Guess we will wait and see…
Two of my classes would have cost $501 on Classbook but were $357 on Amazon. Same editions, all new.
Still, $357 for 2 classes is a crapload of money.