Costal's Guide to College Textbook Purchases

A few people asked me about buying textbooks for college...so instead of writing seperate e-mails, I decided to write a few tips right here on the good old blog.

First, how to: Most colleges follow the same system for purchasing textbooks: Print out your schedule, go to the bookstore. Look for your course number and professor name on the racks. All of the required books will be available on a shelf with your professor's name and the course number.

Pros & Cons to text shopping:

Few upperclassmen purchase books BEFORE the 1st day of the course because they assess the importance of owning the book based on the syllabus. If the book is only used for one week of the course, they may try to share one with someone else, check with someone they know who took the course. For instance, many sororities and fraternities keep files of notes on textbooks, so some brothers and sisters avoid purchasing books (or in some cases even writing papers

: ( --makes me a sad panda--altogether.

Some students use discount or used book resources online to avoid the high prices at college bookstores. The downside of this comes if you are receiving grant, loan or scholarship money that can be applied to a bookstore, but not a third party vendor.

Waiting can be a tricky strategy because bookstores DO RUN OUT of books, though profs are usually sympathetic to this as they understand the perils of collegiate bookstores. Waiting also greatly increases the possibility of needing to buy books new rather than used. ALWAY choose a used book if available. Very often they already contain annotations. Sometimes, if an idiot owned the book before you, it can be distracting, so thumb through it at the bookstore before making a purchase. Otherwise, the savings is phenomenal, but buyer beware...college texts are like cars, as soon as you drive them off the lot, value plummets.

I do not recommend to my students that they trade in textbooks. It's a suckers bet. The pittance you receive is not worth it. Now I know the allure is hard to resist when you are flat broke and fiending for a Starbucks, but try. Old texts are much more valuable as future reference or barter fodder, especially within your major.

I am Joe Costal...and THAT's one to grow on!