Super User Root beer Posted May 6, 2009 Super User Posted May 6, 2009 I was looking ahead to see how much it cost me for my books for fall semester and I was comparing prices from my school's bookstore and Amazon. I stumbled onto sellers on Amazon selling books cheap! http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0618789820/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&qid=1241629892&sr=11-1&condition=new Scroll to bottom about books being sold by individual sellers. Can those 20.00 books be right? I mean even with 98% sellers rating they could still try rip me off for measly 20 bucks.... Quote
CFFF 1.5 Posted May 6, 2009 Posted May 6, 2009 I haven't bought books from amazon but I have sold books on there. The $20.00 price is real. When I would sell my books on there, I would price my books $1 below the lowest price just so I could sell my book fast. I am pretty sure my brother has bought and sold books on amazon and has never had any problems. Quote
Bull Hurley Posted May 6, 2009 Posted May 6, 2009 Could very easily be right, is this your first semester at college? They buy the books at the bookstore on campus for $100 and at the end of the semester they can sell them back there for $10-$15 or sell them online for $25-$30. What would you do? I also quickly learned and didn't buy any of my books till after the semester started and usually you can find someone that took the class the previous semester to buy one off of just as cheap on campus. Heck I even got alot of my books for nothing just borrowed them off of friends that had taken the class. Quote
Super User Root beer Posted May 6, 2009 Author Super User Posted May 6, 2009 Could very easily be right, is this your first semester at college? They buy the books at the bookstore on campus for $100 and at the end of the semester they can sell them back there for $10-$15 or sell them online for $25-$30. What would you do? Nah, this be my third. I bought all my books first time around on campus and sold them all just above 50% of what I actually paid for at the bookstore. I try to B.S. the bookstore manager telling her there a low supply and high demand on the book, so I'll sell it to you at a higher price you can make a 10.00 profit, but she said in a very annoyed tone "NO!" Half of my books for fall is being bought through people who already took the class.(no one is selling the book I need for calculus) If the professor changes the books at last second I can still sell the book elsewhere for a profit. My friend letting me borrow his accounting book for a semester, then I give it back to him at no charge. Buying and selling books is a lot like buying and selling financial instrument. Everyone is out to make a profit. I could get all my books through individual people for total of 100.00 and then sell back to bookstore for a 200.00. Quote
Big Tom Posted May 6, 2009 Posted May 6, 2009 They say not, but Universities make a crap-ton of money on books the first, second, and third time around. They sell you a book for 100 bucks and only give you 15 for it when you sell it back because they aren't using that brand new edition next semester. Most of the time this is a lie. They turn around and sell your same book for 85 used the next semseter and only give that poor sap 5 for it come sell back time. The same cycle gets repeated until a new edition actually comes out (which usually only has an extra chapter at most). College seems one of the worst scams out there at times. They take advantage of students any way they can. Quote
Super User Root beer Posted May 6, 2009 Author Super User Posted May 6, 2009 College seems one of the worst scams out there at times. They take advantage of students any way they can. As my economic professor puts it "Colleges and Universities believes that the cost of education is relative inelasticity." : : Quote
daviscw Posted May 6, 2009 Posted May 6, 2009 Root, our professors actually tell us to buy from Amazon because they know the bookstore is a rip off. Appalachain has a textbook rental system which saves hundreds of dollars a semester. I usually have to buy 1 or 2 a semester though, and they come from Amazon. Quote
Super User Dan: Posted May 6, 2009 Super User Posted May 6, 2009 yup, I save about 40% on books by buying from Amazon. Our professors tell us the same thing. They don't like the bookstore ripping us off anymore than we do. The best part is, sometimes you can sell them back to your school's bookstore for more than what you paid for them! The only downside to getting text books from amazon is that if you wait until the first week of classes to test out a class and then decide you want to stay in it, you have to wait a few weeks to get the text and you can get behind on work. Quote
Bull Hurley Posted May 6, 2009 Posted May 6, 2009 Our professors tell us the same thing. They don't like the bookstore ripping us off anymore than we do. They only say that because they don't get any of the money themselves. Wish there was an Amazon when I was in college. Heck about all anyone used the internet for then was chatrooms, porn and email. Quote
Big Tom Posted May 6, 2009 Posted May 6, 2009 Pinky, not much has changed since you were in college. Quote
moby bass Posted May 7, 2009 Posted May 7, 2009 The only time I ever bought new books was my first quarter. Unless I couldn't find one used. The best part is, the important texts are already underlined or highlighted. And never buy the book until you actually receive an assignment in it. Quote
BigBassGuy Posted May 7, 2009 Posted May 7, 2009 And never buy the book until you actually receive an assignment in it. +1 We had two books in college that cost over $100 each and we never even looked in them. I guess it would have been smart to atleast scan through them, but then I'd be considered a nerd and have to kick my own a** ;D Quote
Super User Root beer Posted May 7, 2009 Author Super User Posted May 7, 2009 The only time I ever bought new books was my first quarter. Unless I couldn't find one used. The best part is, the important texts are already underlined or highlighted. And never buy the book until you actually receive an assignment in it. You know, that actually ticks me off. My biology professors would give us 9 pages of notes to print out...Never used the book, not once. > Quote
bmadd Posted May 7, 2009 Posted May 7, 2009 Our professors tell us the same thing. They don't like the bookstore ripping us off anymore than we do. They only say that because they don't get any of the money themselves. That isn't entirely true. I had a professor who hated the bookstore so much that he wrote his own textbook and published it on his website. He would just pull it up on the projector in class and go from there. Pretty cool. Quote
daviscw Posted May 7, 2009 Posted May 7, 2009 Our professors tell us the same thing. They don't like the bookstore ripping us off anymore than we do. They only say that because they don't get any of the money themselves. That isn't entirely true. I had a professor who hated the bookstore so much that he wrote his own textbook and published it on his website. He would just pull it up on the projector in class and go from there. Pretty cool. Same here. A lot of professors write their own because the generic ones blow. Then they force you to buy theirs. Quote
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