College Textbooks

17 years ago

I had a hard time getting rid of college textbooks, after all, they cost over $100 per subject so I thought I had to hang on to them. I moved them several times until I finally got rid of them. I found a student who was majoring in my major (psychology) and gave him all my books. He has told me on several different occassions how much he has enjoyed having them as reference books. He intends to pass them along to others when he graduates.

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Comments (9)

quiltglo
17 years ago
Good for you! I'm glad you found someone who could really use them. These have always been a struggle for us. My DH can use some textbooks as reference, but I couldn't wait to ditch them as soon as I could. It never failed that I couldn't sell them back to the bookstore, since the professor always seemed to want the new addition for the next semester.

DH is still constantly buying textbooks, so we run a search on Amazon for the prices on the used books and print that off for our records when donating to the local university library. Itsdeductible only gives general prices for fair market value, where some of his books would sell for 10 times that amount.

Gloria
vtchewbecca
17 years ago
I can't seem to part with my engineering texts, even though I'm now teaching and no longer in an engineering field any more. It's a pride thing...and a lot of good memories wrapped up in those texts.

Now most of my education texts from my master's degree...out. Except for a very few I still use.
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tsugajunkie, It looks like you're reading very selectively, not picking up on any of my points. I don't know what the actual numbers are. Let me be very clear about that. What I do know for certain is that used textbooks is $0 to author. The author would make more money by selling electronic copies of their book because more people would buy it. Heck, maybe people would be willing to pay even more than a paper book for it because of the convenience of not having to go to bookstores and wait in line then return the book because the professor changed his mind at the last minute. treebarb, I understand the problem of losing a lot of our manufacturing jobs to other countries. But saying that we should continue to waste paper to protect jobs is like saying we shouldn't use home solar systems because if everyone made their own energy, the people that work at the power plant would be out of a job. Or its like saying we shouldn't try to keep people off drugs because if nobody was on drugs, the people that work in the rehab industry would be in the unemployment line. There is a clear solution here. Provide hard copies for students that prefer that. Everyone else can use rights-managed digital copies and kindle type things.
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I work at a university as well. Rental is a very good option, with one caveat: if the textbook is used for two courses over the course of a year, you will need to pay the rental each semester, but you only have to buy it once. So be aware that for many science and math classes, it would be cheaper to buy a used book online for the year than rent for two semesters. Regarding e-books, I think that depends on the subject as other have pointed out, but also on your daughter's preferences. I would not want e-books in anything (I'd be ok w/novels) but then again I'm 50 years old! Lastly, the advice to wait until school starts probably depends on the size of the school. Maybe at large universities where textbooks are selected by groups of faculty you might have instructors telling you what you can "avoid". But where I teach we pick all our textbooks for every class individually-why would I require something I don't think they need? I expect my students to have their texts from the very first day, and homework is due almost immediately.
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Comments (19)
Good call, Joyful, you're on your toes! But this is a timely post, what with school starting up soon. I raised my grandsons and they came to me with some pretty poor habits. One was 'forgetting' to bring home the textbook from school so they 'couldn't' do their homework. I solved that problem by going down to the school and getting the ISBN number off each book I expected them to need and then I ordered the book to keep at home. Usually I used Half.com or Amazon. I could get a $100 book for sometimes as little as $10. I did this all through their middle school and high school years. One of my grandsons was a destructive kid and he would mistreat his school books terribly. So it made me feel better to be able to donate the textbooks I bought at the end of the year as he was better supervised at home and didn't tear things up. My grandmother had all kinds of sayings, and one was, "It's an ill wind that blows NO good."
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talley_sue_nyc
17 years ago
It' s a good idea to try to pass your textbooks on ASAP--before there are developments in your field that make your book a tad obsolete.

And while the professor is still using them.

I didn't keep many; and the only one I've ever used again is my beginning German book.
socks
17 years ago
If you are buying textbooks, here is another site you might check: http://campusi.com/
raptorrunner
15 years ago
I just took several to goodwill. They will probably trash them, I don't know, I just didn't see the point of holding onto books i haven't looked at in 15 yrs ... Also there is a website for textbooks called cash4books.net. you put in the ISBN and they let you know if they can use it and how much $ you can get.
jannie
15 years ago
I kept most of my college textbooks. Moved them several times, I lived in various apartments for about twenty years. Moved them to my home in 1981, found space for them on my bookshelves. Then one year I decided to have a real clean-out. I donated a bunch to my local libray, threw some away , kept only my yearbook and The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I wish I had thought to give them to a student. I didn't have Craigslist back then . . .
sheriz6
15 years ago
It's so nice that today there are loads of places to buy, sell or trade second-hand text books, but when I went to college (back in the early 80's) it was unusual to be able to buy or swap books, and they were expensive even back then. Luckily, I was an English major, and so kept most of the fiction I had to buy for school. The rest of the books have vanished over the years with moving, tag sales, library donations and what have you.

My mother still has some of her college text books, as well as some of my Dad's, and as they're all over 40 years old, I can't imagine they'd be of any use to anyone.
lynninnewmexico
15 years ago
If you're looking to sell textbooks, the best place is through Amazon.com. If you're looking to buy textbooks, I've found this site, www.cheapesttextbooks.com to be the best site. Just last week, DS asked me to find the best deals for the books he needs this semester (his second year of grad school). It still makes me ill to see the prices on new textbooks! Cheapest Textbooks quickly came up with a list of online places, prices and condition for each book he needed. I then clicked on each to check them out and ended up saving him almost $200 on this semester's textbooks alone.
Lynn
janetgia
15 years ago
"...a lot of good memories wrapped up in those texts..."

That's it, right on the nose. I kept a few text books for several years after I'd graduated, precisely because I had enjoyed the classes (and college overall) immensely - it was a wonderful time in my life. I think more than anything else, the books were just a reminder of that. I finally got rid of them - I don't remember how, it's been so long ago - but I'm glad to know I'm not the only person who hung onto them well after I was done with school!

Janet

College Textbooks

Comments (9)

quiltglo

vtchewbecca

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