Poll: Do you sell your textbooks or keep them?

[Zim Hosein]

Personally, I keep my textbooks, how about you?

 

[sniperruff]

i try to sell whenever possible. you can always buy it back later on for a much lower price.

 

[blustori]

I sell my textbooks for stupid classes, but keep books which I think are important. Most of the EE books I'll keep.

 

[tennisflip]

I resell textbooks that will get me a good chunk of my money back... like my O-chem text.

 

[PHiuR]

I keep some...I sell others.

 

[ElMonoDelMar]

I keep books related to my major.

 

[archcommus]

Uh, I'm not gonna pass up a free $200 every semester.

Sell.

 

[FleshLight]

Sell. I try to break even, or even make a few bucks.

 

[imported_Mike]

I keep them mainly for the fact that I paid $60+ and they're willing to give me ~$10.

 

[sundev]

Originally posted by: CheapArse
I keep them mainly for the fact that I paid $60+ and they're willing to give me ~$10.

You only have to pay $60 per textbook?? Wow.

 

[zainali]

sell them. bad memories.

 

[Mo0o]

Try to sell, else i wont have money for the books I need next semester

 

[AbAbber2k]

I keep them if they're well written and highly applicable to my future career. Otherwise if I know I'm never going to need them I get rid of them.

 

[Plasdom]

I sell them on amazon. Those sell fast. I even managed to get more than I paid for some used one.

 

[duragezic]

Depends. I generally try and borrow books before even purchasing, then I generally try to purchase an intl/B&W edition for $30-40 (instead of $80, or $120+ at bookstore) then I just keep those. I generally try and buy cheap books that relate to my major like CS, EE, or even Math (course I had to keep my Calc book). Thing I learned from working at the uni library is that they have TONS of books on any major any subject that are just as good as most textbooks (they even have older editions of a lot of textbooks). So it doesn't really pay to keep them when the one time you need to look something up you can go to the libary. Plus you can't sell them all the time depending on a few factors. Like my useless discrete math book... got a whole $5 for it!

This way, I usually only need to spend about $100 a semester on books. I only spent $55 this semester and the discrete book was not needed at all so it should've only been roughly $35. I don't see why people go and spend $500 a semester then get stuck with mostly useless books.. there is almost always a way to save money.

 

[imported_Mike]

Originally posted by: sundevb

Originally posted by: CheapArse
I keep them mainly for the fact that I paid $60+ and they're willing to give me ~$10.

You only have to pay $60 per textbook?? Wow.

$60+ ...depends on the class

 

[montanafan]

I kept just about all of my textbooks. The ones for my major came in handy later. Some of the others were useful for my students in their other classes later, especially The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I enjoyed reading several of the books from my literature classes later at a leisurely pace instead of having to frantically study them like I did in college.

 

[StevenYoo]

sell.

 

[hdeck]

sell most of them. very few are worth keeping.

 

[middlehead]

I don't sell them back to the bookstore, but I've sold a few to other students.

The first (and only) time I tried the campus buyback, they lowballed it so hard that I told the guy "I would rather take this thing home and use it for toilet paper than accept $0.02 on the dollar from you."

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: sundevb

Originally posted by: CheapArse
I keep them mainly for the fact that I paid $60+ and they're willing to give me ~$10.

You only have to pay $60 per textbook?? Wow.

$60's...low? I paid $65 for ONE book this semester, all the rest were $10 to $30.

 

[jinduy]

i sold them but a few years later, sometimes i wish i had kept them

 

[BW86]

SELL SELL SELL

 

[Thegonagle]

I get rid of most of them. The buy back table at the bookstore is gravy. I'm very unlikely to crack the book open ever again, so getting a couple bucks, and allowing another student to save some money next semester seems like a good idea to me.

There was one that had some minor water damage. Took it to the buy back table, where the guy paged through it, spotted the water stains, and handed it back to me, saying "we can't buy this." I handed it back to him and walked away. In retrospect, I should have given it to the library, but it was getting late and I didn't feel like walking over there.

 

[mjh]

Originally posted by: ElMonoDelMar
I keep books related to my major.

Yeah, I also usually keep books only related to my major.