any cheap books help

racht70

Hio there ....im due to start a degree in sept in social science and i need cheap books...im a very mature (35) student with 2 kiddies so paying alot for books isnt high on my budjeting list at the mo.thanks ...Rachxx

elisebutt65

Hiya
I'm 40 with 2 kiddies as well - doing a marketing degree. I bought loads of books from the college library at a 1/3 of the price - students seel their old books all the time.
Also check with your local library - they usually have a few of the texts you need and can order them in if necessary. College library is a bit useless as all the students try and grab all the books they need straightaway and then keep renewing them so you never get a look in - LOL

I also get a few from charity shops - amazing finds in some of them.

kiara_2

sometimes you can get books on ebay or amazon marketplace. May also be worth putting up a notice wherever appropriate at uni, there will be students a year or two above you who would gladly trade their old books for beer money. Another thing I did was buy any hard to get hold of books with a couple of friends off the course and share them.

reen_3

don't buy any. i got through a 3-years social policy degree without buying a single book. unless you plan on reading them over and over again after graduation, it's a waste of money.

MaureenHB

Join Book Crossing http://www.bookcrossing.com/home
or Freecycle on Yahoo groups,
it's amazing how many people have books to swap, and you might just strike lucky!

jr666

You can often get lucky if you look on foreign ebay sites.

It goes without saying that 99.9% of german people have no need for an english copy of a social science txtbook. For this reason if the book you want is listed on this site you can usually pick it up for a bargin.

Also i'd wait until you get to uni because students a year ahead might be keen to shift books they're finished with so keep your eyes on dept. notice boards.

It often pays to buy older editions. They rarely change much unless its a major revision and are usually a fraction of the price. Maths books for example have the same exercises (although usually on different pages from the newer edition).

Good luck

J

Maisie

Look at car boot sales. I picked up some books for 10p each. They're usually around a £1 each

hippypixie

When I started my degree I was sent a HUGE booklist and spent a small fortune buying them all, but I wish I hadnt bothered as we havent used them much, and for the times I did need them I could have just borrowed them from the University library. I suggest you maybe just buy one book for reference, maybe from ebay or amazon, and leave the rest for now.

Pots'o'dosh

Definately try Amazon.com as you can buy second hand books. Just do a search on the title you require and it will list them in price order.

Dr_Tom

One thing you need to watch out for, especially in Science subjects, is that publishers are known to bring out an updated version of core textbooks every year, to cull the trade in second hand copies. All this needs is a few new questions, renumbering of all the existing pages, examples and questions, to make the previous version quite worthless.

The other place worth checking, especially if you can club together with other students to reduce the postage costs, is Indian bookshops. They often have licenced copies of UK textbooks printed on cheaper paper at a fraction of the price of the UK version. This is especially good if you want cheap background reading and also works for some non-academic books.

fruityslh

Wait until you get to uni to see which ones you do actually need, som lecturers work strictly to their reccommended texts others don't, you'll soon realise what you actually need and then put a notice on the board to see if there are any 2nd years willing to sell/give you theirs