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by Ein2015 5398 days ago
Where do I get $25 textbooks?
3 comments

The same place you get 50 cent antibiotics and $1 DVDs. If you are in the US, UK, CA, or western europe no need to apply. The publishers have decided you can pay more and will charge you thusly.

Or try to get one of the international students to give you theirs. Makes you laugh internally to know you spent $100s of dollars on engineering textbooks while the internationally student sitting next to you has the same one in paperback and probably paid $10 for it. And that's if their government scholarship doesn't include the book stipend.

Buying international versions was one trick I wish I had learned when I was just starting college. It would have saved me a lot of money over time for the same content.
You used to be able to do so through Amazon but the publishers caught on fairly quickly. I managed to get a bio book that way, my ex-gf bought her organic chemistry books ($$$) this way as well. The next semester they were no longer visible even when searching by ISBN.
At places selling textbooks to schools, not to university students.
Used on amazon.
Look to the international editions. These are often shipped from India - quite thin paper but the same content:

http://www.abebooks.com/products/isbn/9780136042594

Won't the second-hand price of this particular book be pushed up by the numbers of people after it for the free Stanford AI class that uses it?
The price drop after the class is over may be higher than the increase.
Tracking price and availability of used books might be interesting to plot against course difficulty ramp up.