Cheap solution for buying textbooks?

[Need4Sleep]

I recently got accepted into CS 135 computer science for my(soon to be) college, but as a highschool senior with no job, shoveling out $140 for a textbook seems insane to me. Does anyone know of stores/sites that sell college books for a good price? Thanks!

[Moschops]

abebooks sometimes has some decent deals, especialy if you don't need the absolute latest edition (which as a general rule, I found, you really don't) or are happy buying an overseas edition (usually softback rather than hardback, thinner paper, lower-quality ink, but an awful lot cheaper).

As an aside, I find this whole textbook thing wildly different across countries. I went from nothing to a Masters in the UK and probably bought fewer than ten textbooks, some of which cost what I think would be about 16 US dollars. Many of the courses just plain didn't use textbooks¹.

_{1. I didn't take computing. Maybe it's different in computing :)}

[ne555]

I miss you, gigapedia.
¿Buy a book? ¡These Romans are crazy! Go to your local library, they should have what you need.

You could "borrow" from your seniors (or drop-outs)
There are also scholarships, or if you crazy enough, student loan.

[ResidentBiscuit]

shoveling out $140 for a textbook seems insane to me

Heh, that's nothing. Computer architecture class I had required a 480 dollar text book. Books are expensive, sounds like it's time to get a job.

[Cheraphy]

shoveling out $140 for a textbook seems insane to me

Last spring I took a class that's textbook was custom made for the school, and had you tear the pages out of it and costed about $260. So, I couldn't sell it back. And I couldn't find it cheaper online.


This was a personal fitness class I was taking as a gen ed at a community college. That was bullshit.

[z05DSL3A]

My computer architecture module had two required books ... it turned out that both were out of print and were not scheduled for a reprint. Strangely enough the five copies that the library had all were lost by the people that took them out.

[Moschops]

I don't recall there ever being a required textbook for my courses. I always thought that such things were having a laugh; you pay for the course, and then, instead of actually teaching, the instructor just points at the textbook. You could have just borrowed it from the library and received the same education for a few pounds in library fines.

Does the instructor get some kind of a kickback on this?

[z05DSL3A]

Moschops wrote:

I always thought that such things were having a laugh; you pay for the course, and then, instead of actually teaching, the instructor just points at the textbook.

When I was at Uni it was a case of having one hour of lecture, one hour of tutorial and three hours of (guided) self learning per module per week*. The books were for the self learning, the lectures and tutorials went beyond the books (in most cases).

Edit:
* eight modules per year, so a 40 hour week + any course work that we had to do.

[1yR4jE8b]

I stopped buying textbooks after my first semester of first year, unless the professor took the assignments out of the books directly -- usually I would just go the library, get the book and photocopy relevant pages then.

You can usually find "international" versions of books on ebay for really cheap, and some even on less than "legit" sites.