How Much Do Uni./College Textbooks Cost These Days?

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Pls give a range of recent textbook costs, least expensive to most expensive.
Pls specify which currency.
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Bonus question: Do you buy physical books or e-textbooks?

Many thanks!

Textbooks, very often, are over $100.

I work in a college library. Professors leave textbooks “in reserve” sometimes so students can study them for two hours each for free.

Many students because of the expense will buy used textbooks at reduced rates. I think even Amazon is into providing this service.

Yes, there are websites like that.

But textbooks are still pretty expensive.....especially for independent college students.

In italy we have the illegal shops which allow you to print a whole book for just 10/20 euros (15 $)

Some new chemistry textbooks are usually hundreds of dollars each to buy. In the area I teach in, I typically recommend a much older textbook for struggling students. It can be found on amazon for about $10 + a few dollars for shipping. It often does a better job at explaining certain functional groups and reactions than the recommended textbook for the lecture course. The campus bookstore will not carry the one I recommend because it is “too old”. The real reason has to do with the amount of money that they can make from it. New textbooks are a goldmine as they can add on to the end cost and a majority of the students will pay it without checking other sources for the book.

If you want expensive textbooks, one of the chemistry classes in my graduate school used a series of specialized books for a particular topic. The twelve volume set cost $7,000+ back when I was still in school. Many students could not afford the books, so they would go photocopy the entire series in the university library (on special 1 hour reserve). It took a long time and many trips for them to do that page by page. The library was charging them 15 cents a page in the process, so they did not mind. I never needed the course, but knew a few grad students who did.

Some classes don't require books

Every book costs different amount

Try to buy used

At Laney College in Oakland, customers are not allowed in the area with books

You give the cashier the list of books and they get it

You don't know if there were used books

Ass holes


You don't have to buy from school bookstore

Online

I wanted to mention that there is a push in my department to go towards a free online database for textbooks for general chemistry. Of course, the campus bookstore totally opposes this idea. They would lose a lot of revenue if this becomes policy. There are already two professors who are doing a trial run using those textbooks in their classes.

But, there exists a flip side of the coin on this subject. Sure, free books for students would help them. However, it will also cause less books to be written on the subject matter, since the authors get no pay for doing all of the work. With less competition, I can see that it can lead to an issue about controlling content within the “free” textbooks. Initially, it may not matter, but the effects will start to show with the passage of time.