Textbooks

Some things are more expensive then textbooks.

 

It is that time of year again. The smell of freshly opened cardboard, stacks of paper gleaming on the shelves, yellow stickers proclaiming bargains. The season for textbooks.

The bookstore is freshly stocked, courses have had their reading assigned and all is left is for the books to be plucked fresh from the shelves.

Of course that will cost a lot more then other means.

The internet has filled an interesting gap in an other monopolistic industry of university textbook sales. Without the internet most books would be purchased based on the prices for new and used set in the campus bookstore, now those prices can be compared to new and used on helpful sites like Amazon.

This can lead to large savings, sometimes. I purchased the books I need for my one non-physics course next quarter and I have forgotten what that was like. Instead of a single expensive text the requirement is six sort of expensive books. From the bookstore I found out the books I needed and I then turned around and bought them new and used off of Amazon. This saved me about thirty dollars or so over the used versions of the bookstore.

The possibility of savings are greater for science texts which can be two to three times as expensive in the bookstore for the same book.

Often though the bookstore does have reasonable prices or a slightly higher price for guaranteed quality — the book can be looked at first. The major drawback of buying the internet is the chance that the book will not arrive by the time it is needed.

No matter the method buying books can either bolster confidence in a class or quickly pull it down to preemptive boredom.