I have never worked in textbook publishing. When I was a student I tried to get books as cheap as possible but I just consider it a sunk cost.

Why? Because once I started thinking about who was getting what money, I found myself more focused on the buy back price than actually using my textbook, highlighting in it, marking in it etc.

As opposed to the textbook serving me, I was serving the textbook, making certain it didn’t get damaged so I could get the most back at resale.

Sharing textbooks? Don’t we look at the inner city kids who have to share books and shake our heads? Why am I sharing books in college?

Buying old editions, figuring out which page is actually what, having to wonder if my book has what it is supposed to have, hoping I can buy the computer code online — look my time is the most valuable, non renewable asset I have.

Okay textbooks, can cost $500-$800 per semester. Yeah that’s a lot so I advocate getting the book as cheap as you can and not worrying about resale. Mark in it, bend the pages, make notes in the margin.

You are in college to pass the class not to spend time in textbook conversion.

I think a better solution would be to cut back on something TRULY unimportant like weekend beer drinking to make up for the cost of the books!!

At my school bookstore (U. of Connecticut) they have a buyback system–this may be popular at other schools as well, I have no idea.
lets say a new textbook costs 100 dollars. you have the option of buying it on the spot for 100 dollars, or you can buy a used copy for 70% of new cost (so 70 dollars). At the end of the semester you can sell it back to the bookstore for half of face value (aka, 50 dollars). Therefore your net expense was 20 dollars.

But wait…theres more!
Many students have found that they can get used copies of textbooks off of sites like amazon and half.com for less than even the used prices at the bookstore. For example last semester I took financial accounting. I got the textbook off of half.com for 45 dollars, the original price was 120 dollars, so when I sold it “back” to the school bookstore, I received 60 dollars cash. 15 dollars PROFIT!

Another possibility is book editions. You touched upon this in your article, however you didnt mention how this can actually act as a double-edged sword. Because in many cases book editions are so close in content, a lot of teachers dont CARE if you have the previous edition. For example, in my communication class we were asked to get the 11th edition of a textbook which had a staggaring pricetag of 104 dollars USED! However when directly asked on the first day of class, the professor admitted that the 10th edition would be acceptable. 10th edition on half.com? 99 cents + 3.50 s/h.

Another trick that you will see pulled is the combination “online access” and book package. In many cases this makes the used book worthless since the code will have been already used. A savvy student will then buy that used textbook for a couple dollars, and then pay…say 20 dollars for a fresh access code direct from the publisher. Much better option than buying the package for 100 dollars, or sometimes the “ebook” package for 60.

It doesnt always work, but if you put in the effort you can save some major cash. It never hurts to ask. Of course there are always those times when you just have no alternative but to bite the bullet.

I hope this helps some of you!

My two cents: where there is too much greed (and I believe there is in the textbook publishing world), the economics of the alternatives, by definition, become more attractive. As such, by playing these games, the textbook publishers will accelerate the speed at which competing sources of information (which is what a textbook is), replace it.

Would you rather sell 10 books at $100 a pop (while 40 people find a way to get by without or find a used book), or sell 50 copies new, at $25 each?

That said, as a college instructor the cost of textbooks makes me livid. The freshman comp texts I’m required to use this fall, both in new editions, are ordinary $20 paperbacks. Nothing special about these things. Not a lot of four-color illustration…none, as a matter of fact. No exotic layouts, no mathematical formulae (which are cheap to typeset in LaTex, anyway). Cost to the student: $80.

That’s inexcusable.

The result, however, sooner or later will be bankruptcy for textbook publishers but for bookstores and the middlemen who feed of the whole industry. The community college I’m teaching at is talking about switching to a 100 percent open-access system and eliminating textbooks altogether.

What goes around comes around, eh?

P.S. Take time to enjoy your wedding day. After all the time, effort, and planning of a wedding, its amazing how quickly it passes. I’ve been married for 2 years, and it seeams like it all happened in the blink of an eye.