How much are you spending in textbooks this semester?

Only $675 because Anatomy course this semester uses the same books as last semester! My books for that class alone were almost $500 last semester: textbook (new version this year, of course), online access to online McGraw Hill site that wasn't usable for the first 6 weeks of the semester because of "interface problems" with Blackboard, a 'custom' lab book, and a 'custom' images book.

My school has started using a lot of "custom" books, which are only applicable to our school. They're from major publishers, but it keeps you from being able to get used books and especially from chegg or amazon. These "custom" books are just as expensive but they fall apart by the second week of school because the perfect binding is so cheap.

How much you spend for text books depends on the number of courses you are enrolled in and the requirement of each course. The average text can cost between $90 and $140 and some courses require that you have 2, 3, and 4 books to complete the course. Buying used books is certainly a way to mitigate this circumstance. The cost of a book is not determined so much by content, although some ego maniacs would argue differently, but by the limited number of books that are printed. Material contained in texts becomes outdated quickly which adds to the cost of keeping the material current. A range of cost for textbooks per semester is $500 - $600, and when it is less than that, be aware that some semesters you will be paying more. It will average out. If it is a real hardship, talk to your professor. He/she usually has a few tricks up his/her sleeve and the good ones will get you through.

Renting can help, if you haven't tried that. You can save a ton of money if you rent the books instead of buying them. And absolutely resell, on Amazon, your books once you're done with them. I find I make much better money if I sell them on Amazon than if I sell them back to the bookstore or similar. And if the edition is still the current edition, and you bought it used, you can sell it for what you bought it for; that's my experience, anyway.

The access codes, though - when you need those, you need them, and those, you can't buy used. You can buy the book part used, but the access code is a different story.

But no, this isn't cheap. But do think about renting for next term, at least for the books that will either go out of date quickly, or else you don't need to keep. It'll save you a ton.

I don't like the "custom" books, for the very reasons Marianne mentioned. I don't use them in the classes I teach, because I want you to be able to get some money for your book at the end, when you're done with it. I also try to be conscious of how much the books I'm assigning in my classes actually cost, and if I have a choice between a $150 book and a $300 book, I'll go with the $150 book, even if it means I might need to make some handouts to supplement it. I've found that a lot of professors are conscious of how much the books cost, and try their best to keep the costs down, but sometimes, we don't have a lot of options. The book that's needed, the one that's best, is expensive, and we have to assign it, because it's seminal to the discipline. But we at least do try.

You probably already checked, but just to be sure: for courses that require access codes (e.g. online homework system), you can purchase the code directly online(e.g. McGraw Hill's "Connect" HW system, $50 for the code). You can also pay $100 instead and get the code and access to a time-limited (online) access electronic copy of the textbook (typically for a year). The actual textbook is about $180, so this saves $80.

Maybe your access coded courses might have that kind of electronic textbook available as well, you can contact the professor via email to ask.

Mcgraw Hill Connect Promo Code

$432, which I would have originally spent $800 but I rented a majority of my textbooks on Chegg.

All the students can bring rakes shovels and brooms and kindly ask the school to give them a nice splendid discount

500 ( community college)