Here’s the problem, the people who sell books to the college book stores, they pump out new editions like nobodies business and refuse to sell old editions to the bookstore, so you end up having a book that’s outdated before the semester is over. Meanwhile unless you contact your profs prior to the term starting and are able to know for sure that the book you’re buying is within a few editions the online thing really is a gamble.

For this too work contact the teacher as soon as you are in the class in order to get the book list, ask for title, author, publisher, edition and ISBN. Check online I always used amazon.com and barnes and noble. Always look for used. If it’s within $10 of the bookstores price, go ahead and buy at the bookstore. If you live near other colleges you can try to visit (don’t call it’s annoying when people aren’t even in the school and having you track down a book and its price) and compare that way.

Basically you have no real choice but to eat the price your first term. People at my school sold and rented books to people (renting is basically you give them 10-15 and you get their book for the semester and return it to them) once you get friends you can start borrowing old books from them and some people pitch in and share books in a class.

Whatever you do, don’t sell the book back to the bookstore, like I said before the books are out of date before the semester is over, the few they do buy back they don’t pay much for.