# Expensive college textbooks: Are students finding "creative" alternatives to paying? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 20, 2007, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718 "2007-01-20T15:54:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/41 "2007-01-22T00:36:25Z")
[QUOTE=Cardinal] I’ve just stared at people who complain that the college book store is out of the text. “You buy your books at the college book store? You don’t know of [www.abebooks.com](http://www.abebooks.com), or at least [Half.com](http://Half.com)?” [/QUOTE] On the other hand, I’ve seen classmates burned by the internet approach. Four weeks into the class, they still don’t have the text in hand. There is one classmate in particular - who has chosen me as his favorite classmate and sits next to me. Burned last semester by not having the book until nearly a third into the semester, he has now been to two classes without having this semester’s book. However, I’m a little unsympathic - I’m not on a tight budget so I go to the bookstore when books for the next semestser are first available and get a new one - because whenever I’ve gotten used (usually because the new ones aren’t in yet) I’ve always had a book owned by a yahoo who underlines the worst crap and writes answers next to the problems. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/42 "2007-01-22T01:59:09Z")
I’ve seen the whole gamut of behaviours. Textbooks have always been considered relatively expensive, not just over the last few years. Some medical textbooks ring out at over $300, a few over $500. My mechanical engineering professors generally used to use their own notes instead of textbooks. I’d take them over Schaum’s or the classics any day (which were much more basic and watered down) – I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I am lucky to have had some damn fine teachers. In medical school, one book isn’t necessarily better than another. I know people who would use library books, would use illegal photocopies, would sell illegal photocopies, would use old editions, etc. etc. Some resourceful students would even sell their own private notes as a compendium of various textbooks, class notes, old exams, etc. There isn’t too much taught in med school that is not in the University of Toronto MCCQE review notes! ---
**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/43 "2007-01-22T03:44:29Z")
[QUOTE=asterion] I bought the book off Half for about half-price. The book had several stickers put on it which, if you peeled them back, said “Not for sale outside the Indian subcontinent.” I didn’t exactly feel bad about it, but I will say that the quality for that textbook is possibly the lowest of any of my textbooks. [/QUOTE] I’ve heard that buying them directly from India is much cheaper than even half, though you do have to deal with very slow shipping times. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/44 "2007-01-22T03:56:04Z")
[QUOTE=Rysto] I think that the universities should provide the textbooks to students for free, and include a standard fee in the students’ tuition that covers the cost. You’d see a lot fewer useless textbooks being required once the university had to foot the bill. [/QUOTE] This is how it worked (still does I think) at UW-Platteville. Textbook rent is included in your tuition. You pick up you books at the beginning of the semester, and hand them back in at the end. You can buy them if you want (I didn’t even know this till my junior year). I was even able to pick up a book for a class I wasn’t taking (to see if I wanted to take it next semester) Brian ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/45 "2007-01-22T04:11:07Z")
I used to hang out in the bookstore at the start of a semester, and wait for someone to pick up a book I had a copy of. I’d then offer my book at the midpoint between the used book wholesale and retail price…so I’d get a few extra dollars, and the buyer would save a few. I once took a class where the prof had us buy copies of his book from Kinkos. The price was right, but unfortunately, the master copy had been highlighted with some color that copied as solid black…So all the important points were unreadable. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/46 "2007-01-22T04:25:41Z")
I did a medical school elective in India. Medical textbooks there are roughly one eighth their cost in Canada, but sometimes soiled, sometimes printed on cheap paper, usually marked “For Sale In India Only”. Given Indian bureaucracy, I think shipping times would be considerable. Having travelled to China, books there may be a third the cost if you can find it in English. You probably can’t. In India, English can be a lingua franca for academia due to the large number of other languages. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/47 "2007-01-22T05:05:14Z")
I did several of the things listed in this thread. I shared books with friends, buying them directly from other students who had previously taken the class, and selling them to other students the next semester. I got much better prices this way, and it wasn’t uncommon to actually manage a small profit. Around Junior year, I realized that the library generally had one or two copies of a given text (that you could check out. They had a few on reserve, too). You could check out for the whole semester _unless someone else requested the book_. If someone else requested the book, you could only have it for a month. So my friends and I would check as many of our books out as possible, and then immediately make requests for all of each others books. Slightly unethical, but I didn’t feel too bad. The reserve copies were still there. I used them when the text was expensive and I couldn’t check one out. And only one lucky person was going to get much use out of the check-outable texts; it might as well be me. I also discovered (too late to actually use it), that as a “time saving measure”, the library charged the same amount for all lost books. And, for some of the really expensive texts, it was less than the cost of the text. I’d feel a lot less bad about contemplating this course of action if the library hadn’t tried to charge me over $100 to replace a little paperback book that I could have replaced for $7, except I could only find a current printing, not the exact 14-year-old version that I’d lost. Apparently other students were more daring, because that policy only lasted a semester or two. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/48 "2007-01-22T05:33:42Z")
I remember someone putting a sign up for used books. ‘like new with grades to prove it!’ textbooks have been stupidly expensive for decades at least. one would think that the internet could be used to break this monopoly - but the universities would have to be proactive. what used to chap my ass was we usually had to buy some gawdawful expensive book, and there would be a much better cheaper book available ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/49 "2007-01-22T12:52:30Z")
[QUOTE=China Guy] I remember someone putting a sign up for used books. ‘like new with grades to prove it!’ textbooks have been stupidly expensive for decades at least. one would think that the internet could be used to break this monopoly - but the universities would have to be proactive. what used to chap my ass was we usually had to buy some gawdawful expensive book, and there would be a much better cheaper book available [/QUOTE] My pet peeve was that you’d buy the text - and three or four supplimental texts (usually this was History classes). Since everything was such small runs and obscure, everything was really expensive. I remember a book that clocked in at a $1 a page - fortunately it was a short book - only about $80 pages. ---
**Author:** ![dre2xl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/34f0e0/32.png) [@dre2xl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dre2xl)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/50 "2007-01-22T13:52:45Z")
One word: India. ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718/51 "2007-01-24T00:05:30Z")
[QUOTE=jlrepka] The publisher of one of my current texts offers the entire text in PDF format on a CD, for roughly half the price of the print edition (considering that production is practically costless this seems overpriced, but since it’s easily shared among multiple users there is a rationale). I’ve had the bookstore offer them the past few semesters but students don’t seem to go for it. I’d be interested if anyone here has any comments on that. [/QUOTE] You’re either tethered to a computer or paying for ink. Seeing as the hardcopy textbooks I use are about $40-$50, and a black ink cartridge is $30, and that’s not even taking into account if I am required to print in colour for a diagram or something, and then waiting an hour to print out the text on my cheapie printer with my cheapie paper, and I can’t turn around and sell the text after, and it’s just a lot of damn hassle and I’m not that financially strapped I need to scrounge like that, I’d rather just buy the damn hardcopy. (woo, run-on sentence!) In addition, in my area of study, I can use most of my textbooks in the future for reference, so it isn’t like one semester then throw away kinda thing. It is also the same way of thinking that people use when they buy a CD but could use iTunes. They want that hardcopy, to feel it in their hands. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-college-textbooks-are-students-finding-creative-alternatives-to-paying/388718.md?page=2)