How much are you paying for books this semester?

[KestrelLowing]

So, I just got the list for the textbooks I'll be needing this semester. Hence the question.

So how much are you paying for books this semester? My guess is everyone's could be summed up in "too much!" but I'm just curious.

[Dopefish]

I only need a couple books this semester, as a couple of my courses are essentially sequels to earlier courses, covering later sections in textbooks I already have. If I'm really lucky I might even be able to get them at a discount too as I have connections with the publisher.

[Bakemaster]

Just to clarify, are you asking for the total price for all required materials purchased new from the college bookstore, or the real amount paid/planned to pay, from e.g. online retailers, Craigslist, rentals?

[KestrelLowing]

Just to clarify, are you asking for the total price for all required materials purchased new from the college bookstore, or the real amount paid/planned to pay, from e.g. online retailers, Craigslist, rentals?

Well, I was going with what I'm actually going to pay - used, online, and from other people. If it was new from the bookstore, holy crap. I don't even want to think about it.

[charolastra]

When I was a student (2006-2010), I budgeted $600 a semester to buy used books - either online, from the bookstore, or, occasionally if I lucked out, from another student.

Most of my classes were only offered once every 2 or 3 years, or were one time offerings, so it was difficult to find the books to buy from other students. In general, rather than one or two textbooks, I would have 7 or 8 books per class, plus at least $50 worth of printing online materials.

As such, I never sold back my books either because there was no one to take it and the payback became negligible once I went through the trouble of hauling 30 books to the post office on foot.

[Lady Macaroni]

Eight books for the semester, list price ~$260, Amazon for ~$140.

[KestrelLowing]

Eight books for the semester, list price ~$260, Amazon for ~$140.

eight? EIGHT!? I have one text book that's $280 used online!

[Dopefish]

I theorise they're book books (fiction and the like), rather than textbooks.

Textbooks are pricey, 'regular' books not so much.

[EvanED]

I theorise they're book books (fiction and the like), rather than textbooks.

Textbooks are pricey, 'regular' books not so much.

It varies a lot by discipline I think. I haven't really had classes for a few years, but I think the most expensive books I ever had were in the $120 range, new list price.

I am in computer science, but I get the sense that some things like bio fields are even much worse is terms of textbook price (and release behavior). Probably most of my late semesters (after I discovered half.com) were $200-300 or something for 5 books, say. (Just a guess.)

[Bakemaster]

I've had several required texts with a list price of over $200. Each was for a class in one of the main hard sciences—bio, chem, physics.

Not really sure yet what my costs will be next month. I have a much lighter course load than I've had previously, though, so I expect to spend around $300 total when all is said and done. We'll see; if I can stay under $200, I'll be thrilled.

[raike]

Hmm, I need to buy 4 books, since I already have the fifth one, and the lab manual I need is online...
If I got everything new from Amazon, it'd be just under $400 (two of them are in the mid-100s, and two are about $60). If I can get some or all of those used, I can get it down to half of that, maybe.

Now that I compare my university bookstore's prices with those of Amazon, I see that the price of a new book on Amazon is about the same as a used book from the bookstore. Lovely.

[clever_username]

I was just over 600, as I had to buy a couple of large textbooks that will be used in this and subsequent semesters, especially physics. My genocide class requires 7 books, too, so that was a bit annoying. I got them from Amazon and they were all less new than used at our bookstore.

[Aightynine]

Mine was close to $600, something like $580 or $590*. I'm pretty sure that a third of it was for physics, and chemistry wasn't exactly inexpensive either.

*Actually, if you don't count the code I had to buy to get into the online physics homework site we're supposedly using, I guess it was more like $520 or $530 for actual books.

[gavin]

I generally used abebooks.com and usually got a good deal. I always asked professors if I could get previous editions exclaiming that I need to eat that semester. Usually professors with their names on the books would say I needed the newest, others said it would be fine. I usually went with previous editions either way. I never spent more than $300 per semester with that logic, even when I was in premed and taking advanced science course which I found to have the most expensive books of all. Even exceeding books related to my religion degree. My business degree was the cheapest of all, surprisingly enough.

I'd be interested in seeing what field of study the individuals who spent the most were in.

EDIT: Oh, I also used Amazon, of course. Abebooks isn't always the cheaper and if you can get something for a similar price at Amazon you generally always should because abebooks is sometimes slow as hell. But I'd regularly find a previous edition for $1 plus shipping.

[engr]

I'm in grad school and will only be taking 2 classes this fall. Only one of them requires a book, which I luckily was able to buy used.
Now, 5 years ago, during my freshman year... :shivers:

[Kirby]

I'm a freshman (well, tackling some more advanced classes - APs covered the necessary prereqs) CS major, and so far I've had to pay $300 for 3 books (computer architecture, discrete math, java). I have a few others classes that haven't posted any books (hopefully they haven't posted any because there aren't any), so we'll see.

[maxh]

Almost 700$, though one of them isn't actually a book, rather a stack of pages that I had to bind myself.

[Feddlefew]

I don't know exactly how much I'm spending on books yet, but it'll be somewhere in the $500-$600 dollar range. I hope.

Edit: I have seen the (prices of my ) future (text books). My organic chem books might end up costing $400.

[raike]

Now that I've ordered stuff, I got four books for just under $200, with shipping. The only downside is that shipping will take between 5 and 14 days. Pity.

[cjmcjmcjmcjm]

Was supposed to be $150, got it for $85 after a gift card for Amazon was found and I ordered a pound of dice and a couple used CDs to go with it.

EDIT: also, this thread should be locked and everyone's post changed to either "too much" or "more than they're worth", the substitution being randomly chosen.

[B++]

I paid $220 for six books. Two of them are regular books and one is actually a textbook, work book, and CD. I bought one book and rented another from my college's bookstore. The rest I got from Amazon.

[jawdisorder]

As of now, only 4/6 of my classes have posted anything and I don't have any "required" books. This is very likely to change though as I'm very certain the last two will have books and being Math and Physics classes they will probably cost a decent amount.

[Feddlefew]

I'm now in the $600 + range. And I still need to buy lab books. ;_;

[cjmcjmcjmcjm]

Apparently the students in the nursing program need damn near $900 in books and an iTouch and a good number of them are useless e-books. If they could be resold, they'd be useful.

[KestrelLowing]

Well, never mind. I moved up a category. I have now spent $707 on books and I still need to buy one more.

[Feddlefew]

$675

First semester of Freshman year.

;_;

[NotlimTheGreat]

This semester its only around 350. My first two semesters last year was in the range of 600-1000 each though. I was sort of surprised seeing i didn't have to fork out so much this time around.

[lanicita]

This is my first semester of grad school. My books are mostly cheap, but there are a lot of them and most aren't any cheaper used. They were about $650 new from Amazon, but I think in the end they'll be more like $400 thanks to rentals.

[jawdisorder]

This semester was nice to me, only $110.

[vulgar_wheat]

Only needed to get five books this semester. Two of them (for computer systems) I got for free from a friend, an algebra text for about 30, a logic text for about 30*, and a physics textbook for 80 (which I could've gotten for cheaper if I had remembered to buy it ahead of time). So five books for about 140, which is pretty nice.

It's pretty nice that almost all of the compsci classes here don't have textbooks. To the best of my knowledge, Computer Systems is the one and only cs class for which I'll have to get a text*. In the past, all the classes were entirely self contained; and from what I know from other people, that's how all the upper-level classes are, too. It's a different story in math, but...

*It's not entirely true. It's very possible to take the class WITHOUT the text; it was written specifically for the course, and the lecture slides are all put online. Still, I found it to give some helpful background info, and... I got it for free.

[doinkisaac]

Technically, I'm paying $33.18 (used physics book). Factoring in my regular books (I could get from library, but I'll probably buy), and test prep books: $354.96 (includes full price for the physics book). With my textbooks (yay highschool), it's $1042.81 (full price).

[yurell]

Chinese wholesalers are a godsend for textbooks.

[++$_]

In college, I never paid more than $250 for textbooks in a term. I bought them from the campus bookstore. The average was probably about $150.

But, to be fair, I was always very careful about which books I bought.

[charolastra]

This semester I'm taking 1 class: it's $50 for the used textbook and around $5 for each case study. In total, it will be around $100. Luckily I'm able to print at work so I save a ton on printing costs as there are around 30 pages of online reading to do a class.

[coyotebush]

Two used old editions, one rental (first time trying this), and one workbook.
Total: $129.43

[Meem1029]

17 credits, ~$120. Win. $80 math book (Honors Math 1, multivariable but a level up) and $40 greek book. ComSci books online. All new.

[Nat]

Just one book (Hartshorne's algebraic geometry), not because I really need it for a course, since the library has it, more because I'd like to have it to read in my spare time.

[Obby]

I spent probably $600 on books each term my first year at my school. Most people I met seemed to be under the impression that "required" actually meant required and you'd fail if you didn't have it. By now (first term of senior year), I pretty much didn't even get the books for half of my classes, and if I did it would be by going in with two of my other friends. So a book that cost $260 from my school's bookstore, we end up finding the exact same edition on ebay for $50, and splitting that three ways ends up really cutting down on the cost. Now, the exception to this is books that will be useful to me later on in life. I actually purchased the books related to power systems analysis and such, so I'll have those for reference if I need them later on. But there's no way in hell I'm spending $60 on a history book I'll never pick up again after the class ends.

This term, I've spent a grand total of $100 on books for the three classes that require books.

[RollingHead]

I started university yesterday and learned that textbooks there aren't mandatory, but are highly recommended and each teacher provided a few suggestions. If I buy them all new I'll spend over 200€ (about 280$ I think), I might end up making photocopies as many students do.

[HamonRat]

Hmm... i don't need to buy books. Library all books give us for free. We must buy some pens, pencils and a lot of notebooks. Some years ago we need to but... hmm... 15 or 20 books and in addition some workbooks. Thanks God, that now school give us books for free.