Inexpensive Textbooks?

I've more often than not found amazon to be the cheapest.

Have you shopped around locally? Maybe try craigslist or ebay..

Ebay sells a lot of international editions, which is great cause they cost a lot less but are the same book just maybe without color or the paper is of lower quality.

So far, every book (International Editions) I bought on ebay had colored pages and quality paper was the same as US edition. If you are not sure about content, you can always check the seller feedback or just ask him about the book you are interested in.

I second checking with Half.com or Amazon. I buy my texts from there and have saved soooo much over the school bookstore. I got my current Phys book from Half for $17 plus shipping in great condition with NO highlighting/writing while most my classmates spent $70+ on the same book. Also good to sell your older texts so you can afford to buy the ones you need now!

As an alternative, your school library may have a copy of the text you need on hand. At my school you can check out texts for a few hours(can't leave with them though) and they will let you (pay to) make copies from the text. I am sure that probably infringes on some copyright laws somewhere but the school pretty much condones it and the students sure aren't going to be notifying anyone about that... Maybe you can borrow from a classmate and copy or try searching for the E-Book version online. I've heard of classmates that choose this option, they say it's much cheaper than the physical text. Check out the publishers website or try with google for that. Good luck on the book hunt!

Last semester I got my book from Amazon and saved $50+ from the bookstore's price (same edition, etc.).

This semester I got my book from ebay (seller was in Malaysia) and saved $70-ish off the bookstore price.

In both cases, the books were brand-new, hardcover editions, and arrived in about three days.