Can I not buy textbooks at school? Can i print it because i am poor
The cost of textbooks has to be factored into the overall cost of college when you determine what is affordable.
Textbooks are copyrighted – you can’t re-print them without permission. And even if you got permission, the costs to print them out would be high.
For some cheaper alternatives you might consider renting books (ex. from Amazon, Chegg), buying used books (Amazon, bookstore, people at the college), seeing if the textbooks are at the library (especially if it is a text that isn’t used often).
Seconding @happy1. It is potentially illegal and probably very expensive to print out whole textbooks even if you can find them online. There are many lower-cost alternatives other than your school’s bookstore, such as buying used, renting, etc.
Definitely let your professor know that the cost of purchasing the book is prohibitive if they don’t mention the book at the start of the semester. Some professors add books to their listing on the school bookstore’s website because it pesters them to do so, and they don’t actually plan on using the book that much or at all. They may also say that an older edition of the same book is fine to use and might just give you different problem sets. Most professors will also place a copy on hold in the library, i.e. you can only use it there but you have full access to it at any time.
Also, check which publisher the book comes from, and see if your school subscribes to that publisher’s journals. Sometimes you can get a free e-book version of the text to use.
Finally, in some disciplines it is significantly cheaper to order the books from other English-speaking countries. Check out Amazon UK, for instance–often the book is so much cheaper, the international shipping is no big deal.
Once you have the isbn number of the book you need try looking at price comparison sites such as bigwords.com, slugbooks.com etc. Compare prices for used, rentals etc too (and look at rental due dates). You can also ask/email a professor if you need to use the edition requested or if an earlier edition is okay. If you get a book that comes with a code that is usually a brand new book for the code to work but you can try asking if the code is needed.
Note that printing costs money, and those who own the printers will not appreciate printing books on them (or will charge money for that), even if the books are legally free to copy or you otherwise have legal permission to copy.