Biggest textbook ripoffs

[pstokely]

For a statistics class, I had to buy a new copy of the book just to get a program needed for a lab that was on the CD that came with the book, I couldn't download it. Haven't any other major textbook ripoffs. If can don't buy new, just buy a readable copy of what is needed. Last year, I found a textbook in the trash that was still readable that I later sold on half.com (I did mention I found it in the trash. A lot of professors get kickbacks from the textbook publishers.

[ghostsofgiants]

1. Most texbooks, in my experience, are ripoffs.

x(

[laconicsax]

2. The problem is publishers, not professors.

Publishers release new editions every year with minimal, if any, actual revisions because it forces everyone, including professors, to buy the new edition. It pretty much shuts down the used-textbook market. Bookstores won't buy back old editions, making them unavailable to later students, forcing all students to buy the newer, more expensive editions and the publishers rake in the cash.

[pstokely]

3. It probably depends on the major or subject

The textbooks I found in the trash must have been replaced buy newer editions. I think they were used in a college algebra course.

[TheMightyFavog]

4. Had a prof at my alma mater who was notorious for this.

He taught the public speaking class, a class the every student attending is required to take. He also published his own textbook for this class. He was infamous for publishing a new edition of his textbook every year so he could bypass my alma mater's textbook rental program. (Students at my alma mater rent most of their textbooks rather than buy them.) He was finally pressured to stop putting out a new edition every year by the student government the year after I graduated.

I remember one year one of my friends taking her copy of that book out to the grill outside our dorm and using it to ritualistically burn it after her final.

Made me so glad I took this class' equivalent at junior college. The prof there used his own book, but gave students a very hefty discount. Other schools who used that particular book usually sold it for $50-60/copy, IIRC, I only paid $35 for mine.

[Dr. Strange]

5. That is so wrong.

Good job by the student government.

[TheMightyFavog]

6. Yeah, it only took 'em about twenty years.

That guy got away with it for a really long time.

[AngryOldDem]

9. I've had profs do this under the guise of "study guides."

Produced and bound at the college's print shop (hundreds of pages bound by a cheap piece of tape) and then sold at the bookstore for $10 or $12. Of course, they were "required texts." At least one professor had the honesty to admit that the reason why she did it was to supplement her income.

I have paid nearly $100 for one book, but what I hate are the books that come packaged with CDs and the like. Those are virtually nonresellable. I took a language class with a text that came with a CD needed for lab work, which was a major part of the grade. Some kids bought the text used without the accompanying CD; when they were told that they were basically screwed, I'm glad sharp objects weren't around.

The college textbook industry is one of the biggest scams going.

[Pierre.Suave]

7. Med School books...

Every Single One Of Them...

And I ain't kidding...

[Reverend_Smitty]

8. The worst part about textbooks...

You buy a brand new textbook, find out that you really didn't need to buy the damn thing in the first place...THEN go to sell the book back at the end of the semester only to find out that a "new" edition of the book is coming out so they won't give you any money for it.

That scenario has happened to me on more than one occasion :mad:

[Book Lover]

10. Just curious

What's the most you've ever paid for a non-textbook book?

[Orrex]

11. I'm amazed at how much changes in The Compleat Works of Shakespear from semester to semester

You'd think, since he's been dead nigh on 400 years, that he'd be done writing by now.

Nope! Each semester, a new $70 edition comes out, and without it, you can't touch the class with a ten foot meter!

[Westegg]

12. My college shame: My dad paid for my books...

...and at the end of the semester, I'd sell most of them back to the campus bookstore and keep the cash. That money was not spent wisely, I needn't add. If dad were alive today, I'd have paid him back. Instead, I'm trying to live my life in a less selfish, childish way today. That's not a lesson I should have needed to learn via years of guilt and regret. My parents did, in fact, raise me better than that. Still, I'm doing what I can now to make up for such sins. I'm much more in touch with my conscience than I once was. It'd be fair to say that in my college years I was not in touch with my conscience at all.

Damn! Why do I equate DU with the confessional booth? And me not even a Catholic.

[Sheets of Easter]

13. When I took a class a couple years ago,

I had to buy a brand new text. I bought it on amazon, and saved $30 off the campus bookstore price.

I wish the internet was up to full-speed when I was a full time student. I could have saved a mint.

[PVnRT]

14. Most of them

The engineering textbooks I bought were primarily McGraw-Hill, editions 3-5, first published in the 1950's and only scantly revised between then and the 1991 editions I had that our professors had us buy.

The newer editions of these books cost more and are the SAME DAMN THING with more colorful covers.