How to Successfully Get Robbed by Textbook Companies

Looking back, I took a lot of things for granted in high school. For one, having a washer and dryer available 24/7 (with the exception of when my brother finally washed his filthy track warm-ups) to me in high school is a luxury I now miss dearly. In the same category as washers and dryers, as well Michelle Obama's guiding hand in selecting a perfectly balanced school lunch, I also took for granted the luxury of free high school textbooks. I was never happy about getting these textbooks, but in hindsight, I'd gladly take a 700-page calculus textbook without having to fork over $300 (or more) in exchange for this lug of dead tree. I couldn't have imagined a world in which you have to pay ridiculous prices for books that in some cases are barely used, if ever, in high school. This complex world of textbook wheeling-and-dealing was completely unbeknownst to me until last August.

When I got my fall schedule, I was excited about the classes I was going to take. American government sounded interesting, and history had always been a favorite class of mine in high school. But it when it came time to look into buying my textbooks for these classes, it seemed that the classes I wasn't particularly fond of- like math, or science- had the steepest textbook prices. My math textbook (for a beginning algebra class) was running somewhere around $220 online: the school bookstore was charging $250. I was outraged. How is this robbery even considered legal? But then to put this into perspective, I talked to my nursing-major roommate. Her textbooks were running around $800 for the semester- and this wasn't uncommon. In fact, I soon came to discover that most biology/math-related majors are comprised of course loads that require books to be this expensive. For whatever ungodly reason, I don't know. I don't care to investigate the economics of textbook price gauging, at least not in this blog post.

But then came the shining light in this Catholic college tragedy, chegg.com.

This isn't an ad for Chegg, and I'm sure there are other sites like it (off the top of my head, Amazon), but Chegg seems to have a great reputation for providing a great service to students in a market where the demand is high.

Chegg offers discounted textbooks to students online and are shipped to your house/school/whatever. Along with the books usually come some promotional items; I know my roommate received coupons for a digital printing service along with her purchase.

As a political science major, I have a comparatively low-textbook net cost. However, the general education requirement classes I'm taking still cost me a pretty penny in textbook costs. My Math Lab, which is required for most intro-level math classes at colleges across the country have access codes that run for $80-100, depending on where you buy. Our bookstore charges on the higher end of this spectrum. Such is life.
(Side note: The people in the bookstore are very friendly, and it's a great place to buy some necessities or locally-printed books not available elsewhere. Or if you generally have the money to buy new, go for it).

There are also Facebook groups and word-of-mouth sales, you can pretty much expect to get out of this however much you put in. Little to no advertisement and it's almost a guarantee you won't sell that specific book for your obscure major class; advertise more and the results will be more rewarding.

Repaying thousands of dollars in loans seems so far away, that the immediate costs of a textbook can seem scary in comparison. But don't worry. Paying $300 for a textbook won't seem so bad when you're repaying $40,000 in loans.

:-) Have a great day.

P.S. Sorry for not posting since October y'all (*yinz). It's been busy.