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Earlier in my university career, I was very wasteful with my textbook purchases.  Almost every class has at least one required textbook, and sometimes those textbooks would combine for a bill of $400-$500.  When the instructor said that I needed a book, I just went to the bookstore and bought it.  I was annoyed with the high cost of textbooks and although I fully realized that I would never open them again, I didn’t see any other possibility.

I sometimes saw posters that students had pinned up on bulletin boards, trying to sell their textbooks, but I paid little attention.  I wanted to make sure that I had the absolute right book and didn’t want to take any chances.  Often with university texts, although the title is the same, there are many different editions.  The wrong edition can have changes as subtle as page numbering to something as major as adding or deleting entire chapters.

Buying and Selling Used Books

Last year, I made a wonderful discovery.  On Facebook, Kijiji and even the webpage for the university bookstore, there are classifieds where students can buy and sell their texts.  Many students have posted the ISBN numbers in their ads.  The bookstore also quotes this number in their book listings.  Each edition of each book will have a different ISBN number, so as long as that number matches, there is nothing to worry about.   At first, when I looked into it, I saw the initial cost savings (last term I paid $90 to another student for a $130 textbook).  But what I didn’t realize is the possibility of having a textbook for free.  As long as a new edition doesn’t come out, at the beginning of your next term, you can sometimes sell the textbook that you purchased used  for pretty much the same price you paid for it.  Instead of shelling out $100 or more per book, and letting them collect dust, if I buy a textbook from another student for $90, and then resell the book to a third student for $90 dollars during the next term, the book didn’t actually cost me anything.  I am going to try to do this again this term.

Watch Out For Highlighter!

There are a few things to watch out for though.  With the last textbook that I purchased, I was so concerned with making sure that I had the correct book, I didn’t think to check through the inside of the book.  The person I was buying the book from had said there was no highlighting and when I got home and opened it up, it was filled with pink highlighter.  I am still quite annoyed at this, but one thing is for sure, I won’t get taken like that again. 

I spoke of another thing to beware of earlier in the article, making sure that you have the correct version of the correct book.  Apparently book publishers and authors are well aware of the growing market among students for used books, and they are reacting to it.  I read an article that said that the average textbook used to publish a new edition every six or seven years, but now most textbooks publish a new edition every 2-4 years.  Some new editions actually make necessary changes to the books, and others do just enough to call it a new edition. 

Shorter Edition Cycles are Only Good for the Publisher

The purpose in the shorter edition cycles is to force all of the students in the current year to purchase new books.  If a new edition comes out this year, all of the previous editions are worthless and useless.  I will be unable to sell a previous edition.  As students, there really is nothing that we can do about these sorts of things.  This isn’t so much a risk to the used book purchaser, as you would still be stuck with the same worthless copy if you had purchased a new book as well.