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i try to get the cheapest books possible... used or india/euro editions but I HATE HATE HATE school editions... wtf... 99% of the material is the same its just in different order or a added chapter. I usually end up buying the school edition because I can't be bothered with sorting the book out.

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i paid over $600 my first semester of college for only 16 credit hours

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the textbook industry is the absolute worst industry. you buy a book for $300 and can only sell it for $40. It hasn't lost any content or any of its usefulness, but it's used...

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$9? OMG. That is terrible. Might as well keep the damn thing.Books should just go electronic. That way you don't have to worry about the need for a publisher at all. You can just download it from a website. Or better yet, just put the content on a password protected website. If you pay for a class, then you get access and keep access as long as you like. This would be more cost efficient for all parties involved.<a class="user" href="http://www.jjpmarketing.com&quot;&gt;http://www.jjpmarketing.com&lt;/a&gt;

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hahahaa. Yes I shall stand on principles and waste my money which can barely afford f**king ramen. 150$ for 1 textbook? Nice. ESPECIALLY so when we only use 5 of the 20 chapters in the class they insist you buy it for.

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The article doesn't take into account the money students could get back by simply selling their books on the used book market. I sold almost all my Uni textbooks on the used market and got back an estimated 40-80% (on average) on them, even on older editions. I would usually buy used whenever possible as well so I only ever sustained a small net loss on the books. The problem that I have seen is Uni and college students don't budget or plan for their expenses very well. They buy their books at the last second (when they get the syllabus from the professor) and by that time most or all of the used books are snatched up by the bookstores and people like me who plan way ahead. Then they pay for the convenience of being able to obtain a copy of the book immediately and complain that they are being swindled. This persons inflation stat seems to come from a GAO article (www.gao.gov/new.items/d05806.pdf pg 39), that article, at a glance, appears to use standard inflation statistics from good sources. However the failure to even mention the effects of the used textbook market and the effects of poor planning and budgeting makes this article somewhat mediocre and simply a poor interpretation of the original GAO article on the same subject.

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Long live the Bookstore ! oh wait... no, Long live amazon, i feel better now. Started classes yesterday and as i sat down contemplating why university's raised the prices so much, i figured it would probably benefit me to look into alternative places... and there she was, Amazon.com. actually i did a little research and found that their stocks seem to be rising as well, wonder why ;-) so i got myself a little piece of the pie today, figured it would be a good idea seeing how the new generation is mostly net anyways. Thought i would pass on the news <a class="user" href="http://bullspot.com/?m=board&amp;board_id=56849&quot;&gt;http://bullspot.com/?m=board&amp;board_id=56849&lt;/a&gt;

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Books are killing! I buy them from other students on <a class="user" href="http://studentsmetro.com/textbooks/&quot;&gt;http://studentsmetro.com/textbooks/&lt;/a&gt;

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That makes so much more sense.

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we students have to pay a fee to study each semester (thats worse than slavery) are the lowest income earners because we don't have any time to work unless you do part time study and then it will take like 10 years to get a degree, now textbooks going up four times the rate of inflation ?what the hell!

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No question that textbooks are becoming expensive. But ebay, half.com, amazon have made it easier to buy used textbooks. But what piss me of is when Prof. asks for latest edition!! That makes the situation worst. When you can get older edition (just by 1-2 yrs) in less than $10, we are forced to buy latest edition which is like $150!! Crazy! There are textbook price comparison websites. I use <a class="user" href="http://www.TextBookHunting.com&quot;&gt;http://www.TextBookHunting.com&lt;/a&gt; to compare prices among Ebay, Amazon,&amp; Half.com for used/new textbooks. I think there web site which allows exchanging textbooks too.Good Luck!

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