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Started 2 years ago by misskitty
Latest reply from misskitty

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misskitty
Columbus
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So I am starting school in the Summer quarter. I have some questions
I need books as I found out today books are crazy expensive :(
I was able to find one on amazon for a pretty decent price. The thing is some I can't find
Example:
DEV031 PRE-ALGEBRA PKG. (CUSTOM)Buy This Item

New $73.40 Author:LIAL Edition:1

-What does the (custom) mean ? Does that mean you can only get it through Columbus states book store?
It has no picture of the cover so I assume they don't want you to get it anywhere else?

Like this one
BIOLOGY
Used $108.25
New $144.30 Author:HOEFNAGELS Edition:N/A
---------
BIOLOGY 111 LAB MANUAL(CUSTOM)

New $30.90 Author:MADER Edition:5

It's all pretty confusing TBH
and I just don't understand it.

Posted 2 years ago #
negativetouch

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The Custom stuff you won't really be able to find. Publishers talk the professors into adding a custom piece to the book--like a study guide or something they put together for their class specifically--because it kills the used book market.
Find out if you can if the professors actually use the custom stuff in the class (most don't from what I've heard even though they added it). If they don't get ISBNs for the actual textbooks--the packages will have a different one--and search for those.
The lab manual is probably designed for you to tear out pages for assignments so you'll have to go new on it.

Posted 2 years ago #
lifeontwowheels
Highland West
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O just wait till you go to sell books after the quarter ends and they tell you that the $90 book you bought can't be bought back because it's being replaced with a new edition.

Posted 2 years ago #
misskitty
Columbus
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All of my classes are on-line Except for the Pre-ALGEBRA I made that a hybrid if that helps or makes a difference.
I was going to foreshore get the Lab stuff from CS I know that is most likely tailored for them.

Posted 2 years ago #
pez

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Negativetouch is right, the publishers work with the schools to develop a 'lower price' text book that just has the chapters they need so you don't have to pay for everything else. Problem is that they are generally not that much cheaper and the used market is limited to people taking that course.
When I was at OSU, we always had some professors that had custom versions of the books they authored, but I think OSU cracked down on that. Kind of like the overpriced Cop-EZ packets we used to have to buy with the instructors material in it, always pissed me off when there was a copyright fee in the price for material they wrote. I'm all for being compensated for your work, but only in a free market and not when you have a captive audience.
If you can get the ISBN, try ordering from amazon.co.uk, or one of their other foreign sites, when I was in grad school I was able to buy most of my books from England, then sell them on Amazon.com for as much as I paid with shipping. I think the publishers may have caught on by now and mix the numbers up, but it's worth a shot. You also can generally do well with old versions, biology and algebra don't change much, so the versions are likely to be close enough.

Posted 2 years ago #
adrock
Grandview Heights
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i love course packets. it is a free market. you are free to not take the class or take the class somewhere else. all the copyright fees i've had with course packets were applied when the material came from a published book. it doesn't matter if the teacher wrote it or not, the fee needs to apply if you're using copyrighted material. using copyright fees is a much cheaper way to teach material from multiple books without making students buy 5 books to read a couple chapters out of each.

bigwords.com is great. it searches multiple sites and finds the lowest book + shipping cost.

i've always just chalked up book prices to the price of going to school and assume i'm not getting anything back from them. then if i did get $20 back, then that's a little bonus for the day. depending on what your major is though, you only have to put up with that for a couple years. i don't sell back many of my books now because they're mostly good books and relevant to what i'm going into and i want to keep them to re-read.

Posted 2 years ago #
lifeontwowheels
Highland West
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How free of a market is it in when there are only so many options? Especially at the CSCC price per credit hour.

I typically wait till after the first class or two to buy books. I've often found that some professors don't use all the texts or rely heavily on power point and the online resources and are simply being forced by department standards to list the course material.

Posted 2 years ago #
misskitty
Columbus
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I know that books cost and I did figure it was not always going to be cheap.

Bigwords.com
CUSTOM EDITION FOR CSCC) DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION COURSE DEV 031 (for Columbus State Community College Course DEV 031) Hell yea! I found it for 10 bucks! Thank you a ton for that site. I also found that Bio book for less then half.
I know at some point there will be ones I have to pay a lot for Or lab fee's as much as a book. lol
thanks this was useful information.

Posted 2 years ago #

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