Fellow students, grab some textbooks/ebooks from here, here, here, and here.
We’re trying to get an education. Not go for broke. Hope this helps everyone out a little. I have so many issues with publishers and the daylight robbery that is textbooks.
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impossibleholmesian replied to your post: dude.
Hey! I’m going into Uni next year and I know that the campus bookstore is going to make me broke, so can you tell me what site/shop/store you used to get your textbooks?
Yeah, of course! So, if you don’t mind PDF versions of books (and it won’t hinder how you’re going to use the material), remember to search online for free PDFs of whatever books you need first. I use filestube to search for free PDFs. If a book is very new, you might not find it there, but it’s always good to try.Also remember that even if you don’t like looking at ebooks a lot, it’s alright because professors often put the textbooks you need for their class on reserve at the campus library. So, if you need to read long passages or something you can always head over to the library and check the book out for 2 hours (or however long they allow you to for reserves) and you can just use your pdf for reference and problem sets and stuff.
And then if you want or need (or you just can’t find a PDF) a physical copy of the book, I like to use bigwords. You just type in a name or ISBN and the rest is pretty self-explanatory (you can always ask me if you need help though!). It gives you a lot of options, like, if you want them to include rentals (and then if you want rentals by quarter or semester), international editions, etc. Rentals are often cheaper, but there are some books you might want to keep (books for your major, things you think might be useful for more than just one class, so uncheck that box for those). International editions are cheaper, so always keep that checked. They have all the same material, but the binding might be different and stuff. Just read all the info over a few times to make sure it’s the right one you want and all that.
And! If you’re in college and you sign up for an Amazon account with your university email, you’re eligible for six free months of Amazon Prime (if they’re still doing this, hopefully they are!). So remember that you can check prices on here as well, and if you have Prime, you get free two-day shipping. When you check on Amazon, remember to check out the used listings as well, and see if a used copy + the shipping is less than the listed new price on Amazon, and if it is, go for the used one.
And if you want to check out more resources, check out my textbooks tag. My first two reblogs on that page/last two posts down on the page have a lot of links you might want to look at.
But yeah, what I used this time was just a combination of filestube, Amazon, bigwords, and a LOT of thinking lol. One of the PDFs that filestube directed me to was on Scribd but I could only download the PDF if I was a premium member BUT Scribd allows you to get a “day pass” premium membership for only $9 (so you’re paying nine dollars for 24 hours of access to premium membership materials). And nine dollars is WAY cheaper than what you’d usually pay for a textbook so it’s worth it haha.
For buying textbooks, check out bigwords first. For like, non-textbook books that are sometims required in certain classes, Amazon might be better sometimes (or the difference between Amazon and bigwords isn’t that big). Just remember to check everything!
Getting a good deal takes some work, but it’s worth it because.. well, you shouldn’t be paying hundreds of dollars for a textbook you might never use again.
Sometimes you HAVE to buy new editions of things though because they come with access codes and you can’t get it separately or something. They do that so you’ll buy the new textbook instead of getting it from someone else. Hopefully they offer a ebook version for cheaper or something and you could get that. I don’t really know how to get around that. Or sometimes it’s a school edition or something that your professor wrote that’s only available in the campus bookstore or a packet your professor put together.. and hopefully it doesn’t cost too much or maybe you know an older student that can sell their used copy to you.
I wrote a lot lol. Good luck!! And good luck on your apps if you’re still doing them!
i already saved more than 100 on one textbook that i found. ridic, that’s used too
textbooks are ridic
did the math
I just saved $512.52 on textbooks/books for classes (using campus bookstore prices).
yay me but also bluh textbooks and money
1. Open Culture: Not a large a selection, but high quality texts. If you just want to skim a book to brush up on a course you took in ninth grade, download one of these. I have yet to be disappointed.
2. Book Boon: Provides free college-level textbooks in a PDF format. Probably the widest range of subjects on the web. The site is also pretty.
3. Flat World Knowledge: The worlds largest publisher of free and open college textbooks. Humanitie texts are particularly difficult to come by, this site has a great selection in all disciplines.
4. Textbook Revolution: Some of the books are PDF files, others are viewable online as e-books, or some are simply web sites containing course or multimedia content.
5. Library Pirate: I’ve always had an addiction to torrent based pirating. When this site opened a few months ago, I went a little overboard. After dropping two hundred on a paperback spanish textbook, I downloaded the ebook version illegally. I also got a great Psyc text i’m obsessed with. It will be interesting to see how this site grows- they already have a great selection.
(via pbnpineapples)
Textbooks are fucking expensive, and if your professor doesn’t require a physical copy (most don’t - they just want you to have the book at hand. Or maybe even not. Some professors literally give no fucks about whether you have the book or not) and you don’t mind having your copy as an electronic copy - this is the post for you!
Most textbook companies put out new editions every year or so even though there isn’t really that much new information. Sometimes they’ll eliminate questions if it’s something like a math or chemistry book or they’ll add in a few sentences about updated legislation (the professor I work for teaches human sexuality, and the newest edition of the book she uses included the 2009 decision to allow same-sex couples have hospital visitation rights). These new editions are pointless and only created to make the textbook company money and to cut down on students selling to each other. You’re going to ignore that. We love older editions. Make sure when you’re searching on the following sites that you don’t include the edition number to give you more search results. If one with your edition comes up - great! If not, you can usually stick to something one to three editions behind without any major changes.
Sites you should be searching:
- FilesTube - FilesTube searches THE ENTIRE INTERNET for files uploaded to file-sharing websites such as MegaUpload, Mediafire, or WuUpload. Sometimes people will upload pdf files of your textbook. This is always an important first search.
- Google Books - You usually won’t find your textbook on Google Books, but it’s always worth a look. Sometimes pages are missing because it’s only a preview of the book, but again - always worth a look.
- Scribd - People upload documents to Scribd and by becoming a member (free!) or connecting through Facebook (if you’re lazy!), you can download whatever files you may find. This sometimes includes textbooks.
- BookBoon - website specifically for finding pdf versions of textbooks
- Curriki - free open source materials
- Flat World Knowledge - free business, humanities, and science textbooks
- California Learning Resource Network
- Open Culture
- Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
- TorrentScan - textbooks are also uploaded to torrent sites in some cases - you may as well check.
- If push comes to shove, you can try variations of googling “textbook name torrent” or “textbook name download” or “textbook name download free.” Sometimes things pop up and I never would have known about them.
- LibraryPirate is a torrent search site specifically for textbooks. (Added 10 October 2011)
- AMAZING Reddit post (Added 2 November 2011)
- JenkThat - I haven’t tried this out yet, but I’ve heard good things from others. It’s also a good place to find other ebooks that aren’t textbooks. (Added 29 December 2011)
I’ve found all 8 of my textbooks for this term (19 credit hours, six classes) through one of the methods above. I’m not even going to look at retail prices, but checking BigWords.com (which, if you want to buy your books/can’t find them anywhere with one of the previous methods, will give you the cheapest price on the internet), I saved $497.87 by doing this. It takes time, but it’s definitely worth almost $500 worth of time. If you know of more ways to find free textbooks - please let me know!
Too bad I just ordered all of my books for the term…
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