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Well good news: they don't bring out new versions as often any more for most subjects. Bad news: they are pushing hard for ebooks that are drm'ed to hell so yo
by jccalhoun 5y ago
Well good news: they don't bring out new versions as often any more for most subjects.
Bad news: they are pushing hard for ebooks that are drm'ed to hell so you can't resell them. And if they do still have paper books, increasingly they are moving to "loose leaf" editions which are "cheaper" because they are just loose pages which means they are much more likely get damaged so you can't resell those either. Or if they do offer actual books, they do "rentals" which means you pay most of the price but have to return them and so you have zero chance of being able to resell them.
But that's ok, I'm sure your local bookstore can help you. Oh wait, most college bookstores are now owned by Barnes and Noble and so they are just another corporate business...
- chrisseaton 5y agoWhat I don't get is - do US universities not have libraries where you can borrow these text books?
- malauxyeux 5y agoThey might have one or several copies, though maybe not the right edition and never enough for an entire cohort of students. At my university, students who didn't buy the book would simply make photocopies from the library's copy or from a friend's. But then the photocopiers were modified so that they only operated using credits from "copy card" that was tied to the student ID. I never knew anyone who got into trouble, but heard that you'd be called in if you were making "too many" copies. edit: an extra word
- chrisseaton 5y agoIt's weird because they know how many students they have, they know the text books needed before the course starts, they have a library, seems like the library should provide them.
- jccalhoun 5y agoThey will generally have one on reserve that you can only check out for something like 4 hours or something. My college has used the government covid money to pay for all students' textbooks and we hope to be able to include textbooks in tuition price from now on but they are ebooks only.
- RF_Savage 5y agoThats fucked. I only bought two text books (30eur and 40eur) for the entire time I was in collage. All else I loaned from the school library for free.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoCan students no longer pool their money for a loose-leaf edition and then take it down a local sketchy copy center?
- nerdponx 5y agoEven better, download a PDF on Libgen, print it out on the school library printer or pool your money for a laser printer, and bring it down to a local coffee center for a cheap plastic binder.
- dexterdog 5y agoEven even better, don't print it and just read it on screen or get a supernote and put all of your books on there where you can mark them up and have them all with you all of the time.
- nerdponx 5y agoI still prefer reading on dead tree material.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoeBooks just don't hit the same as their dead tree counterparts. Unless you can live-type LaTeX annotations, I need the paper for highlighting and scribbles.