Comments about ‘The price of knowledge: College students seeking alternatives to campus bookstore prices’

It sounds like we need to get the Attorney General checking into the wholesalers (and possibly the publishers too) for collusion or monopolistic practices. It is really ridiculous how expensive text books have become!

My advice is to find them online. I used half.com, ebay, and Amazon to find my books. My last semester at school I saved over 50% by buying books online. I would buy the used books at the bookstore, then go and find them online. I used the books until the ones I ordered online came, then I returned the ones to the bookstore

The bookstore is a rip off! Stay away from them!

I love how the article qoutes one orginization that says textbooks average $60 per book. I am a senior at the U, and I have paid $60 or less probably once in my enitre college career. Typically books average around $150 per class for my major.

The really frustrating thing is profs. are changing books every year when the new version has one or two paragraphs that are different, and the rest is the same.

Its bordering on abuse when a new text is required for a class where the book only differs in chapter order or chapter problems from its previous edition. Beat the bookstore keeps advertising their "deals" as well but Ive never noted more than a $4 dollar difference on any book Ive needed.

A really good website is bestbookdeal.com it shows the best prices on a book from just about every bookseller online.

I recently came across a site called textbookflix.com. The service is surprisingly good and ended up saving me a lot of money.

You can rent all your books from them at 55-65% cheaper . The catch is, its a rental and needs to be sent back at the end of the semester. They pay for return shipping and also send you a prepaid label.

They sent me an invite code which might work.. so try your luck... ff41-5e5d-1666

Or you can get on their waiting list to get one.

You can also find out from professors or do the research on your own with respect to book publishers- more and more of them have downloadable books at half the cost or less of the textbook cost

Try buying the previous edition. You can find them online for almost nothing and the only difference is usually a few pictures have been changed.

I am a business major in my senior year and my textbooks totaled over $600 with the cheapest being over a hundred dollars used. Needless to say that I am shopping online, because this is incredibly out of my budget.
Who was it that came up with that $60 a book average? I think I have had maybe two or three books that have cost below that, and generally you can't sell your books back for even half of what you pay for them.

Hey kids...get used to it. They ripped me off, then they ripped my kids off and their getting ready to rip off my grandchildren. Nothing has really changed with the business in 35 years. The tear out quiz. On line help access. Rotating chapters. Some of these intro to algebra books are in their tenth addition! How much do you really think that introductory algebra changes? It's mostly about making it so that students get stuck with their books. Those $150 texts are being published for under $20. The publishers have always seen students mainly as their victims!

My daughter took an anatomy class at UVSC this summer. The tuition for the 4 credit class and lab cost about $700 for tuition. The books for the class and lab cost around $400! This is for one class. It's a total scam and completely wrong. I applaud the UVSC professor who has done away with textbooks for his class and instead provides his own material for the students to study from. More professors should follow his lead.

Well said, Frank A, anonymous, and textbook ripoff. I'm really tired of professors requiring the latest edition when the subject matter has change little if at all in the last dozen (or even hundred) years.

May God bless these knowledge seekers and they get some sort of contribution from funds from special funds so set for the promotion of education. God Bless em All.

Try www.Swapbooks.com I got my college books for half price in good condition...

Unfortunately, the textbookflix.com is a rip off also. I checked the prices of a couple books at the off-campus store and compared it to the textbookflix.com and yes they are less intially. But not more than what you would get back for buyback at the prime buyback season. If you play it right and sell your books back right at the end of the semester you get 55-65% anyway. And if you sell at a down time, you end up only saving $8.00 with textbookflix.com. So all is a rip off, but off-campus stores are at least a little bit better...Check out www.aidasbook.com!!

Hey JJ - sounds like you have sour grapes! I am a beta user too for textbookflix and saved a bunch of money up front - totally agree with the story above. I don't to deal with my textbooks at the end of the semester. What's even cooler is that they plant a tree for every book rental - is that awesome or what!

Having recently graduated with my MBA, I completely understand how frustrating it can be to spend so much money on your textbooks. However, after graduating I decided to take a job as a textbook manager to see if I could make some kind of a difference in this costly and ever increasing industry. I have learned a lot since taking this position and have been working with other students to come up with some ways to save students some money on their books. I am in the process of working with some Professors on campus to get them to commit to use the same book for a 3 year period. If I can get them to do that, I can do a Guaranteed Buyback on all of those books and be able to give students more money back on their books. I am also working with our student Government as well as the legislation to try and get the state to pass a law that all textbooks should be tax free. This will save the students another 6.8% on the cost of their books. It makes me so frustrated that the Publishers continue to come out with new editions and keep raising the prices. However, it may surprise you to know that the Wholesale companies are actually in the students favor. The article was incorrect in its perception of Wholesale companies. The bookstores don't pay the wholesale companies anything to do buyback and it is the wholesale companies that are helping us fight the publishers continued raising prices. It is the Publishers that we need to be going after and I really believe that if all bookstore and all student unite, we will have a strong enough voice to drive the cost of textbooks back down to where they really belong. Let's join together and make it happen!