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Author Topic: Textbooks  (Read 16755 times)

elcapitan

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Textbooks
« on: 24 Jul 2005, 03:53 »

Does anyone else hate these damn things?

Beginning of every semester, I find myself back at the Co-op, handing over thick wads of cash in return for a bunch of badly-bound, badly-written books that I probably won't open more than about five times in the semester. I have no alternative - as a computer science student, there's generally no choice of assignments, and hence all the textbooks in the library vanish just when you need them for something due the next day.

After three semesters, here's my collection:

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FruitKat

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« Reply #1 on: 24 Jul 2005, 04:28 »

*agrees whole-heartidly*
I have to spend $450 this semester alone on books, I tried to find second hand ones, I went early, but there were none...
One of the books its absolutely tiny and its $70....
This just drives me crazy.
One of my classes we had to buy 7 books.... SEVEN.
I find English is worst with this, they want you to buy so many books, only to study one chapter or something and then move onto the next one...
Argh... As if being a student isn't hard enough, what with student loans and all that crap.
Almost makes me wanna go back to school where you borrow the books at the beginning of the year and return them when you're done, at no cost... ALMOST.
Also, Have you thought about reselling them? I'm going to do that with mine, I hope they want them...
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normz

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Textbooks
« Reply #2 on: 24 Jul 2005, 04:29 »

aggggh I know .... and being a law student/public policy student i think they just assume you have $500 to blow on text books each semester seriously i would be able to fill 3/4 of your bookshelf and ive only done 1 semester so far *sigh* i wanna know how they justify the crazy insanely over-inflated prices .... it's like what the hell $60 for this tiny piece of shit and i blame textbooks for my worsening eyesight and possible future backpains *shakes fist*
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elcapitan

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« Reply #3 on: 24 Jul 2005, 04:53 »

Quote from: StarlightRecycler
Also, Have you thought about reselling them? I'm going to do that with mine, I hope they want them...


They've wised up to that. Pretty much every year or two they'll bring out "new" editions of most of my books, where they've shuffled a paragraph or two and put on a fancy new cover. As a result, no-one wants the old edition.
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normz

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Textbooks
« Reply #4 on: 24 Jul 2005, 05:00 »

Same prob here ..... also they change the curriculm so much that its not often you have the same books as last year or even last semester. Plus I guess it's the nature of my degree (being law and public policy) to need cutting edge information because laws are enacted and repealed at such a rate that you need a new version every year ..... same sort of thing with alot of other rapidly growing and changing industries (like IT) i guess maybe it wouldnt be as bad for other degrees as alot of my mates can do the whole buy second hand book thing and get on just fine
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Schmung

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Textbooks
« Reply #5 on: 24 Jul 2005, 06:00 »

I learnt my lesson and after the first semester I never, ever bought a textbook again. Libraries and the internet saw me through without too many problems.
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siobhan

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Textbooks
« Reply #6 on: 24 Jul 2005, 06:05 »

weird, i was just thinking about textbooks. i have full intention of selling last years books back to the bookstore. but they were hella expensive when i bought them, the bio one alone cost $175. grr... stupid school sucking money out of poor students
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FruitKat

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« Reply #7 on: 24 Jul 2005, 06:07 »

Yeah, I noticed that the edition had changed for something I had used LAST SEMESTER... So I was reluctant to try to sell it back.
I just hope they still want it.
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siobhan

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Textbooks
« Reply #8 on: 24 Jul 2005, 06:10 »

drives me crazy.. !
i bet that 'edition change' involved a couple new words and some new pretty pictures.. sometimes i have this desire to rid the world of arrogant academics
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heather

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« Reply #9 on: 24 Jul 2005, 08:12 »

I have a ton of textbooks left over from my college years. I plan to donate most of them to the local library. They're mostly out of date, so I can't really expect to fetch much money from them. They served their purpose, but really, it's just an excuse for colleges/universities to make more money.
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Abattur

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Textbooks
« Reply #10 on: 24 Jul 2005, 08:27 »

Wow, here they just copy them ;)

P.S. Starlightrecycler, that is the best avatar. Ever.
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YOUR RESISTANCE ONLY MAKES MY PENIS HARDER!

Mnementh

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Textbooks
« Reply #11 on: 24 Jul 2005, 08:38 »

When I was a history student I never had to worry about that. I would still spend as much on books, but in general they were small history texts, not large texts books.   I would just have 5 or 6 per class.

The nice side is that they were generally good and not the type that I wanted to return, so now I have a rather nice library of history books.
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salada

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« Reply #12 on: 24 Jul 2005, 08:44 »

doing a design degree means most of my books are pretty cool and worth keeping for reference. anyway, most of them are just design books, instead of textbooks per se. got a pretty good collection of french textbooks though, getting further and further out of date every day.
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Se7en

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Textbooks
« Reply #13 on: 24 Jul 2005, 09:52 »

My brother got through his comp sci. without buying a single textbook, or turning up to any lectures. He bassically did nothing for almost 3 years, then worked almost 24/7 for a month on his dissertation.
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bainidhe_dub

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« Reply #14 on: 24 Jul 2005, 10:17 »

one reason i love umd is that we have Book Holders so they'll take *anything* and put it on the web, and then you go in and adjust the prices yourself, so students get to create their own competeitve market. you only really have to deal with the official bookstore or the book exchange (the unofficial terp store) to get lab manuals and stuff that's newly published by the school.. i just got $73.63 from 4 of my books selling! now i just need to go down there and pick it up before they mail it to my last year's mailbox that won't be mine in the fall and is in a building that won't be open til the fall..
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Catculus

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Textbooks
« Reply #15 on: 24 Jul 2005, 10:39 »

I like textbooks. I keep all my math textbooks and some other ones. I sell back most of the stupid ones--unless they're not taking them, of course. I intend to keep all of the ones I am using this summer; one because it's math and the others because I feel they might be useful to me at some point. I know I am going to have to spend a lot of money on textbooks in the fall because none of my classes are continuations of other classes--the last two semesters I've not had to purchase many books because the classes were continuations.
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clasicks

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Textbooks
« Reply #16 on: 24 Jul 2005, 11:03 »

yay for still being in high school, this (senior) year is going to be so much fun.
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JP

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Textbooks
« Reply #17 on: 24 Jul 2005, 14:28 »

I've kept my history books, since I was (well, still am for a few more weeks) a history major and most of them are pretty interesting anyway. But for classes I took as GenEds or other electives and decided I didn't want the books, I found the best way to get your money back was to wait until the same course is offered again - might be the next semester, or the semester after the next. But in either case, I used to just find what building and room the class would be in and go tape a piece of paper to the door listing the books required for the course and the books I want to sell, along with the price at the bookstore and my price. This never failed to sell a book, and I even sold a calculus book that was three editions older than the current one for the class, because math text books don't change that much and I was selling it for under the price you could get it anywhere else.

You won't get all your money back, but you'll get way, way more than selling it back to the store or going through some student-run book exchange program.
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FruitKat

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« Reply #18 on: 24 Jul 2005, 19:00 »

That is really good advice JP... I might just do that, though it seems like a whole lot of effort...Heh.
Also, I'm taking history aswell and I find it hard to part with those books, I think I'll keep them and a few of my English ones I wouldn't mind keeping. Though my history book for this semester was the most expensive one and it's TINY.

And thanks Abattur... Nothing better than doing the Brent Dance...Woo!
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deborah

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Textbooks
« Reply #19 on: 25 Jul 2005, 11:35 »

i'm one of those who keeps textbooks after the class is done, but that's because i'm an english major.  the only thing i find excessively annoying about the english textbooks is when you're taking classes from warring professors, and they each have their favorite different canonical anthology.  i am now the proud owner of an assortment of longmans, nortons, riverside, and heath, not to mention two different translations of augustine's confessions, three different printings of paradise lost, and couple of candides.
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Schmung

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Textbooks
« Reply #20 on: 25 Jul 2005, 11:39 »

Quote from: Se7en
My brother got through his comp sci. without buying a single textbook, or turning up to any lectures. He bassically did nothing for almost 3 years, then worked almost 24/7 for a month on his dissertation.


That sounds familiar. Your brain does some weird shit after that amount of sleep deprivation though.
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Newton

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« Reply #21 on: 25 Jul 2005, 14:07 »

I've had a few crappy books that I will never look at again (like my undergrad thermo and statistics books), but others I've been using for four or five years after I originally took the class.  They are really good references when you are in certain subjects, like physics, so I don't sell any of my books back anymore.  And I have that Kreyzig Advanced Engineering Mathematics book in the picture.  That one is full of good stuff.
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JP

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Textbooks
« Reply #22 on: 26 Jul 2005, 17:20 »

Starlight - Thanks. But don't be put off by how much effort it might take, it's absolutely worth it - and it's really not that much effort. The book stores generally don't change their prices from semester to semester, so it's not like you need to check every time how much the book costs, just remember what you bought it for and sell it for a little less. Most of the effort comes from taping flyers to the doors, and well, if taking an hour to walk around campus can save/earn you two hundred bucks, seems like it's worth it.

I wish everybody resold their books like this because its really win-win. The seller wins because he gets way more than $20 for a book he originally shelled out $80 (or more) for, and the buyer wins because he's paying $50 or $60 instead of $80 for the same book. The only loser is the bookstore, who's ripping you a new one anyway.

The principle is simple: The bookstores might charge $70 for a used copy of an $80 book, and you can always charge less than the bookstores and get more than what they would give for a buy-back. Even for novels, let's say new costs $8, used $6, and buy-back price is between $1-$2. Why not sell your copy for $5 or $4? You still come out ahead of the alternative.

Sorry this post is getting so long, but if everybody re-sold unwanted books like this we'd all save a lot of money, and be able to re-sell the books we bought for almost the same price we bought them, and with all the saved money, maybe we could have all eaten something nicer than ramen noodles every night for four years.
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lordjim

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Textbooks
« Reply #23 on: 26 Jul 2005, 17:49 »

There is the idea that your textbooks are the beginnings of your professional library.  I never sold back any of my CS/Math and now Library Science text books.  Now I have a pretty good CS/programming, math and LS library.

However that idea has been trashed by the textbook publishers.  New editions every 2 years with little change, free copies to the professors (I had one prof who refused them and bought her own), and worst of all books that fall apart.

Now another thing.  My frat back in college did something like the flyer thing.  We pooled our textbooks that we didn't want at the end of the semesters and traded/sold what others needed.  It didn't work too well b/c most of us wanted to keep our major textbooks but if you could get a few organizations in on that kind of deal it may work.
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edwartica

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Textbooks
« Reply #24 on: 26 Jul 2005, 23:11 »

I was an English major, so a lot of times I would be able to get my books used - kind of easy to find a copy, any copy, of Moby Dick or Othello.
Of course what I hated were the damned course packets - seventy-five bucks for photcopied materials!!! GEEZ! Did anyone else have to do those?
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JP

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« Reply #25 on: 27 Jul 2005, 03:17 »

Course packets were ridiculous. Most of the profs would put them in the reserve section of my school's library, meaning instead of loaning it for a few weeks you could take it on loan for a few hours. I thought that was pretty good, sometimes you'd need to wait for somebody else to be done with it but for the most part I had enough other work to keep me busy while waiting.
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elcapitan

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« Reply #26 on: 27 Jul 2005, 03:24 »

Quote from: lordjim
worst of all books that fall apart.


Damn straight. My copy of Adams' Calculus: A Complete Course literally fell apart after about a semester worth of moderate usage - you can see it in that picture, held together with duct tape. Advanced Engineering Mathematics stood up well enough, but we'll see how that goes when I do PDEs next year.
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yipjumpmusic

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Textbooks
« Reply #27 on: 27 Jul 2005, 03:38 »

I love the old book returning where they say, "A quarter for that one."  Oh hell yeah!
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fortheabsurd

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Textbooks
« Reply #28 on: 28 Jul 2005, 08:47 »

Quote from: siobhan
drives me crazy.. !
i bet that 'edition change' involved a couple new words and some new pretty pictures.. sometimes i have this desire to rid the world of arrogant academics

Haha! You wish it involved pretty pictures, a friend of mine who used to be in the publishing business confessed to me that what they actually do is change the order of some of the chapters and say it's "improved and updated."  As for my textbooks, I'm soooo happy now that I'm a junior and an English Major.  My first two years I was spending like four or five hundred on books but this year most of my classes are lit or writing classes so all of my books are mainly novels.  272 in all for my books, oh yeah, and I'm keeping all of my novels because who doesn't like African novels and random Russian literature?  Soo excited about the large chunk of Pushkin and Tolstoy I get to read next year (and they actually call reading that stuff work).  Am I aware that I'm a comlete dork? Yes, yes I am.
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normz

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Textbooks
« Reply #29 on: 29 Jul 2005, 03:21 »

don't worry for the absurd .... i devour 100 page cases and law text books like they were comics ..... i actually do the recoomended extra reading and enjoy it (yeah i know that i really should get a life or something)
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heretic

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Textbooks
« Reply #30 on: 29 Jul 2005, 05:57 »

Hey Norma, quit being a loser :)
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normz

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« Reply #31 on: 29 Jul 2005, 06:11 »

Hey Alex

first of all dont call me my actual name in the forum it creeps me out

and secondly im not a loser *sobs*

love norma
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heretic

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« Reply #32 on: 29 Jul 2005, 06:14 »

it's a one-letter difference....
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normz

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« Reply #33 on: 29 Jul 2005, 06:18 »

BUT i only get called norma when I'm in trouble, even my family calls me normy...... it's when i hear NORMA or even worse Norma Victoria Mary *insert random last names* that I know something is BAD

AHEM on topic.... textbooks are currently taking up to much space on my bookshelf with all their pointlessness. I mean seriously do I really need Sociology: themes and perspectives or Economics in action..... well no not really but i spent tooooo much time colouring in the margins to sell them
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fortheabsurd

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Textbooks
« Reply #34 on: 29 Jul 2005, 08:17 »

Yeah textbooks have taken over my shelf too.  However, I was very conscious not to write in them too much for the express reason that I wanted to return them at the end of the year.  Unfortunately, around the time that I can sell them back I am brain dead from finals and walking to the bookstore to get my 10 dollars for my 120 dollar book just doesn't seem worth it.  I'm convinced this is why the evil bastards who run my school put the bookstore on the opposite side of campus from my dorm.
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heretic

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Textbooks
« Reply #35 on: 29 Jul 2005, 08:50 »

i sell mine to a guy who stand outside this bar. he pays better than the bookstore and buys more of the books. he just sells em on amazon
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ilCorvo

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« Reply #36 on: 02 Sep 2005, 12:04 »

I spent $450 on text books, too. A third of that was on my spanish book and work book. The workbook was 57.50, and is printed on coloring book paper. I plan on getting aboot 50 bucks back. Maybe I'll get entrepreneurial and start a book reselling between the students. A book store revolution of sorts.
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Micolithe

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« Reply #37 on: 02 Sep 2005, 13:33 »

Buying Used from amazon is the cheapest option I've found. Six dollars for my Computer Science 1 book, it came in perfect condition.
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SeŅor Duarte

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« Reply #38 on: 03 Sep 2005, 01:45 »

Thanks for the tip... I just bought my texts today and I just found my $77 Macroeconomics book for $39 on Amazon.  Good thing I still haven't taken it out of the plastic...
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