(OMG) why is text books so expensive?.

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Hi guys, for my semester i need a couple of books BIO10912th edition $260,PSY101$127 and English book used $35.I have to give myself a manicure,pedicure and give blood to my local hospital just so i can afford them.:crying2:I can only imagine how some people are making out if they are taking 5 or more classes. My heart goes out to you guys also let me know some of the crazy things u have to do in order to afford school and books god help us all.

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Buy used books online. Most of the time I even bought an older edition which really saves you some money.

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I

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Specializes in Lactation.

beg and borrow!! plus I work my butt of at work and save money so that I can afford them when it comes time to buy... I also just learned about buying online... :-)

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Amazon, other online used textbook stores, and international versions.

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www.half.com = a lifesaver for textbooks !
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craigslist.com is also a great resource!

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Considering most of my professors write the textbooks themselves, we have no choice but to buy them new. This semester cost me $600 for 5 classes. But it's not as bad as last semesters $750.

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Rent them from www.chegg.com

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Considering most of my professors write the textbooks themselves, we have no choice but to buy them new. This semester cost me $600 for 5 classes. But it's not as bad as last semesters $750.

My school does something just as bad, they have some of the books customized so you have to buy their books, the thing is they are the same books with a different cover and a new ISBN number making it very hard to track them down. My AP2 class even required us to buy outline notes and just in case you thought about not buying them there are required class assignments at the end of each set. :mad:

To answer the OP to why they cost so much... Because they can. We are a captive market and are required to buy what they tell us to buy so they charge us as much as they can get away with. Personally, I find it best to avoid the school book store as much as possible.

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I've gone through Amazon, and will go nowhere else. They had everything, even obscure books one teacher had written that I could find only at the school. On Amazon, they were all much cheaper.

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Specializes in LTC, Med-surg.

I love Amazon for all of my books. Also, buying international versions of your textbooks is KEY. I saved $30+ on my Chemistry II lab experiments textbooks just by buying the international version and it was the EXACT same thing as the U.S. edition of the same lab experiment textbook.

I spent about $410 this semester on books and most of that money went towards my nursing school books. I had to buy 3 nursing foundation books which costed $75. Then, an APA manual that was $27 (AMAZON.com) and a Nursing Concepts and Challenges textbook that cost me $47. So yeah, the bulk of that $410 was because of my nursing 2-credit seminar class.

Then, the rest of the money went towards the 3 English books, 1 anthropology textbook, 1 statistics textbook and 1 chemistry II textbook.

Its not too bad when you think about how much books I got for the measly sum of $410 and 3 of those books were brand new too.

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