<p>Textbooksrus.com will accept international editions, I believe (they also sell plenty of them). Just beware, because they like to slap their own sticker on all the books they sell, and it's a hassle and a half to remove it (I keep all of my texts since they're mostly engineering/science and I need them for reference and like them to look good).</p>
<p>havent tried this site yet, but basically u just swap books with students for free. my mom sent it to me. and as far as how much books cost, i only spent 100-150 each semester shopping online and getting them from friends for cheap. socialbib</a> - 100% Free College Books and Textbooks</p>
<p>Ive never spent more than $50 a semester on books. People who pay in the hundreds are nuts.</p>
<p>also you need to know that just because a professor wants you to use a book doesn't mean you need to. Most professors choose sucky books, for stupid reasons. For Physics and chemistry and all math, I just used old texts in the library.</p>
<p>Another thing I forgot which is what I'm going to do!</p>
<p>The school has about two copies of every textbook on short term loan (2 hours) so I take the book and photocopy the pages I need using 2 cent photocopying...well I'll be doing that this year. Alot of my friends have been doing this and I refuse to buy books this year unless they are really cheap.</p>
<p>i'm also an incoming freshman and i need some advice.</p>
<p>i'm an incoming chem major, and while i am saving up enough money to cover the school's estimated cost of books per semester ($450), this thread has made me seriously consider taking the other route.</p>
<p>my school charges 10 cents per copy. for my science and math classes, would i be saving a considerable amount of money by just copying the pages and stapling them into packets? if my library offered the books for copy-use, could i go throughout college without buying textbooks?</p>
<p>I would only print off stuff once you know how the class runs. You'll find that you probably don't need to copy much.</p>
<p>If you're a chem major, you'll probably want to have a few textbooks on the fundamentals, since you'll find you always wind up turning back to them in your upper level classes. I'd buy an edition or two old if the book is really high circulation and just make photocopies of the questions at the end of the chapter, if that's where homework sets are assigned from.</p>
<p>amazon now incorporates half.com i think? some kind of online cheap book store.
Last semester one of my textbook was 350 dollars by itself. I didn't buy it and just used friend's book. I bought a text book online for 89 cents but the shipping was 14 dollars.
Also consider not reselling some of your textbooks, they're great references for later (research paper or harder class of the same subject). I sold a couple that I know I wouldn't use (Physics and Calc) online because since everybody tried to sell them back, the book stores only bought them back for 10-25 dollars each. Where as it cost me 100-240 dollars each.</p>
<p>Or buy them used at your school's bookstore like follets or something.</p>
<p>Older editions are usually in the library on long term loan (2 weeks). Or sometimes the bookstore sells them really cheap. I have only flipped back to older books for lab reports and etc. So it really depends on the course.
I would suggest going on your school website and checking out all of these things. Also there might be some place with cheaper photocopying because the 2 cent on is through a student group and not actually the school.</p>
<p>thank goodness my school lets you print for free (I scan, then print)</p>
<p>Are paperback textbooks okay? I've noticed a lot on half.com, and they're so much cheaper! I'm just paranoid that they won't "feel" like real textbooks, y'know?</p>
<p>Some of them are printed on nice glossy paper, some are printed on really crappy paper (like, lower than the Schaum's study guides). If you're not building up a personal library of books and just want one to use for the semester, it shouldn't really matter a whole lot. I'm one of those people that saves all of their old textbooks (technical ones, at least) because I've found them invaluable in later classes and projects. I've started to shy away from paperbacks because I don't feel they hold up as well over time, and I don't really want them falling apart in another 10-15 years.</p>
<p>I stayed away from paperbacks because I tend not to take care of my books very well, and I kept all of my upper level textbooks for reference.</p>