<p>I realized that int'l one is much cheaper. Why?</p>
<p>printed in different countries. From my experience, they are the same quality. The bookcover is different. The int'l is cheaper and I would buy that.</p>
<p>I'm not sure, but I think that some of the price difference has to do with the author not getting royalties.</p>
<p>international versions are more financially available textbooks intended for students in foreing universitites produced by publisher to meet demand oevrseas -- in my experience they are worse in quality: usually a paperback with very thin pages and black and write printing so they don't look as pretty as the expensive domestic editions, but also hurt the wallet less -- sometimes the content varies a bit, but usually they are exactly same and in english</p>
<p>for some it is illegal to be sold outside the specified areas -- like this book i got last summer says on its cover that circulation outside of india, sri lanka, and pakistan is unauthorized -- this is because the publisher worries that cheaper versions are going to flood domestic markers, and this is clearly not what the published wants, but people sell them anyhow</p>
<p>US versions are the only ones you can get in bookstores here (go half.com) because book companies collude with one another to fix prices.</p>
<p>now, if you want to buy international edition books, you can get them anywhere, amazon, half, ebay. SOME international books are low quality. However, the seller should be clear about the quality of teh book that they are selling. The book could be paperback (instead of hardback) but the pages are still high quality. One just needs to be careful.</p>
<p>My sister had an international edition for one of her classes, and the only difference was that the pictures were in black and white and it was paperback. I just got the new version of it and, while it is still paperback, the illustrations are in color.</p>
<p>The book sells for $120 used at all the local bookstores, but it's around $40 to buy the international version online.</p>
<p>sometimes they have a different cover type (hard/soft), and I know of at least one case where the international version was missing two chapters.. had to read those two chapters from the book in the library haha.</p>