College Textbooks - Year Three

[disneysteve]

Our daughter is a junior in college. I've previously reported on textbook purchasing, and I just finished ordering all of her books for the spring semester so I thought I'd share an update. Once again, books continue to be much more affordable than I had anticipated prior to her starting college.

For this past semester, Fall 2016, we spent $76.31.
That number will be reduced by reselling as many of them as possible.

For the upcoming semester, Spring 2017, the tab came in higher at $172.82.
Again, that number be get reduced by reselling them later.

But even without reselling, that's a grand total of just $249.13 for the year. And I'm quite sure the total will end up under $200 after resales happen. That's a drop in the bucket as far as college costs are concerned.

Some tips for those of you going through the process now or in the near future.
1. Avoid the school bookstore like the plague.
2. Half.com is your best friend. Amazon is okay but I have consistently found Half.com to be better.
3. Try to buy multiple books from the same seller whenever possible. That greatly reduces shipping costs. It can even be worth paying a bit extra for the book to save on the shipping.
4. Don't overlook rentals but don't be sucked in by the low price either. It is often cheaper to buy and resell than it is to rent.
5. Get your used books listed on half.com as soon as your kid is done with them - and price them to sell. I always try and make my price the lowest available price.

[FLA]

how do you get the books in time for when the class is starting? don't they need them that first week usually?

[disneysteve]

how do you get the books in time for when the class is starting? don't they need them that first week usually?

Classes start January 23 for her. We should have them in plenty of time.

[scfr]

These are really good tips.

Why not give your daughter the tips and then set her loose to do her own book shopping? Even if she ends up spending $20 more than you would have, it will be a good learning experience.

[disneysteve]

These are really good tips.

Why not give your daughter the tips and then set her loose to do her own book shopping? Even if she ends up spending $20 more than you would have, it will be a good learning experience.

We do it together. She knows exactly how to do it. I wouldn't pass up a teaching opportunity like that.

[Thrif-t]

Your really lucky Steve, this has not been our experience with our two daughters. My freshman who is a nursing major spent almost $800 on books her first semester! Now I will say she will use 3 of them for the part 2 class this semester so we will come close to 1,000 in books for her. The crappy part is her anatomy book was close to $400 and not available anywhere but her college (but she will use it again for anatomy 2). I think we were able to get one book from Amazon that we rented for 30 bucks. Oh and her chemistry book that was outrageous too and it was a fricking loose leaf pages that we had to put in a binder, but she will use that this semester too for chemistry 2.

I also have a junior engineering major and her books are always expensive too. We try to rent from amazon when we can but usually come in spending maybe 200-500 per semester. I think a lot depends on the major and the school. Lucky us we have schools that the profs seems to write the books we have to buy and then, oh ya you can't sell them back because they use another version for the next semester. Its a real racket!

[frugal saver]

I was complaining several years ago about the crazy cost of my accounting and taxation books--at least $250 each and another person said that her science books were well over that--and she'd had to buy 5 textbooks that term.

I generally would go to the college book store, get their price and the ISBN and then start shopping around.

[kv968]

Hey Steve, we "talked" years ago and I'm STILL going to the same college as your daughter. I was wondering if you were able to get all of her books for the upcoming semester.

Reason I'm asking is it seems like when I look for what book is required for the course I'm taking it's not posted very early (I think the last class was less than a week before it started). I usually get my books from Amazon and like to get them early to look them over and be prepared but you can't if you don't know exactly what's needed. I'm not sure if it's just the teachers in my major not getting them posted in a timely manner or if that's the norm. Although you'd think I'd have it figured out by now since it seems like I've been going there forever.

And as an aside...how does she like the college and how's she doing?

Kevin

[moneybags]

These are really good tips.

Why not give your daughter the tips and then set her loose to do her own book shopping? Even if she ends up spending $20 more than you would have, it will be a good learning experience.

This is what I did with my kids. It worked out great.

[disneysteve]

I was wondering if you were able to get all of her books for the upcoming semester.

Reason I'm asking is it seems like when I look for what book is required for the course I'm taking it's not posted very early (I think the last class was less than a week before it started).

And as an aside...how does she like the college and how's she doing?

Major definitely plays into the price of books from what I've heard. She is an English major with dual minors in American Studies and Philosophy so she's reading a lot of classic novels and historic writings. Those are very cheap for the most part. Plus they resell well.

We've only had one or two instances of the professor not posting the book info in advance. I think there was one time where she didn't learn what book she needed until the first day of class. Otherwise, she's gotten the list weeks in advance so we had plenty of time to order them.

As for how she's doing, everything is going pretty well. She finished the fall semester with 3 A's and 2 A-'s for a 3.88 GPA for the semester which also helped bump up her cumulative GPA a bit. I think she's right around a 3.5 but I don't remember the exact number. All I care about is that she does well enough to keep her scholarship and stay in the Baccalaureate Honors Program through graduation and she's just fine there.

[disneysteve]

the profs seems to write the books we have to buy

We only ran into that once for a poli-sci class. The professor wrote the book and the study guide and it was only available from the bookstore. Couldn't resell it either. I mean we were allowed to but had no luck doing so.

[FLA]

I'm dreading this because my ex is older and not penny wise, he will think DD has to have all new books from the bookstore, only the best for her. And since our divorce decree includes us each paying half of tuition including books, DD may not care since it's not coming out of her pocket, plus she is easily swayed by her dad. Although, maybe she'll surprise me and have an attitude change because she is thrifty in her own lifestyle.

[sv2007]

$200 is pretty cheap for textbooks . What major?

There's also electronic textbook rentals from Amazon that I tried for one of my classes. It turned out to be great; I was able to read it anywhere (via Kindle in phone, PC, tablet) and whenever I had some time.

[kv968]

Major definitely plays into the price of books from what I've heard. She is an English major with dual minors in American Studies and Philosophy so she's reading a lot of classic novels and historic writings. Those are very cheap for the most part. Plus they resell well.

We've only had one or two instances of the professor not posting the book info in advance. I think there was one time where she didn't learn what book she needed until the first day of class. Otherwise, she's gotten the list weeks in advance so we had plenty of time to order them.

As for how she's doing, everything is going pretty well. She finished the fall semester with 3 A's and 2 A-'s for a 3.88 GPA for the semester which also helped bump up her cumulative GPA a bit. I think she's right around a 3.5 but I don't remember the exact number. All I care about is that she does well enough to keep her scholarship and stay in the Baccalaureate Honors Program through graduation and she's just fine there.

I'm sure the major plays into the price of books especially if you're looking into buying used. The less popular the class, the lesser amount of used books out there for resale. I'm not worried about the price though since my work pays for them. I'd just like to be able to get them a little early so I can look through them and see what I'm up against.

My professors have probably posted the required material in a timely manner in the past, I can't really remember. It just seems as of late it's getting closer and closer to the start date for them to do so.

Glad to hear she's doing well. Sounds as if she'll be very well rounded between English, Amer. Studies and Philosophy. Does she have any idea of what she wants to be "when she grows up"? And congrats on the grades as well. Like you said, keep the Honors going and maybe more importantly, at least for now, the scholarship I somehow have been able to get and maintain a 4.0 but it's becoming more of a curse than a blessing. I didn't really care if I did THAT good but as the classes keep going, now I'm feeling the pressure to keep it up even though it probably won't make a difference in the end.

[sblatner]

Our son is a senior in engineering. He has maybe spent $1000 total in four years. He has ended up finding a few online that have been scanned in and gotten them for free. One problem was that the footnotes were in Chinese but he was able to deal with it. Not sure about others but textbooks have not been a burden to us.