libresos

Textbooks

Page history last edited by aline soules 1 yr ago

Searching for Textbooks on the Web

Basic points:

If you are on the quarter system and others are on a semester system, you may be ahead or behind other students on other campuses when it comes to looking for textbooks. This will affect availability and price.

Various websites (listed below) may offer deals on editions of textbooks, but you are unlikely to find a consistent pattern among them. It all depends on their third party dealers (used bookstore affiliates). Try them all in your comparison shopping.

If your textbook has multiple editions, material from one edition to the next may vary a lot or a little. Factors affecting that are: the rate of change of the subject matter, whether there has been a change in author or authors from one edition to the next, how much effort an author has put into a new edition, and so on. If you can determine that there has been minimal change or changes that won’t affect your classroom use, you may be able to buy an earlier edition. Invariably, an earlier edition will be cheaper.

When you search these web sites, limit your search to “books” if that option is available to you. It narrows and focuses your results on what you want.

First, here’s a site where you can compare prices on 200+ online bookstores for new or used books: http://www.DealOz.com

Second, here are some individual sites to consider: