Thread: IT Textbook Source Needed

My son is starting his IT degree and the textbooks are very expensive, when I can find them. I have tried Amazon, Ebay & Chegg. Does anyone know of any other sources that usually have a lot of IT texts at reasonable prices? At the bookstore rate the textbooks will be more than his tuition and new laptop combined! Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Originally Posted by marianne202

My son is starting his IT degree and the textbooks are very expensive, when I can find them. I have tried Amazon, Ebay & Chegg. Does anyone know of any other sources that usually have a lot of IT texts at reasonable prices? At the bookstore rate the textbooks will be more than his tuition and new laptop combined! Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Did you check the used textbooks on Amazon? As for alternatives to those you listed, I would look here (textbooks.com generally has a pretty good selection of both new and used books.) You might also consider looking for e-Books which are usually about 50% of the price of new. Some good sources for those are CourseSmart, VitalSource, and Explana.

I use a bookstore search engine like this one.
Compare textbook prices on new and used college textbooks
or
BookFinder.com: Search for New & Used Books, Textbooks, Out-of-Print and Rare Books

It saved my daughter a tremendous amount on this semesters books, from around $400 down to $170.

Not exactly textbooks, but lots of IT books, free downloads
Home | Wow! eBook - Blog

For discounted, physical textbooks (not e-books) I've always had the best luck on half.com, which is associated with ebay. E-books... getting ready to try that route myself, so I'll be checking out those sources quoted here. Thanks everyone for sharing your sources.

Thanks for all your help! Unfortunately, two of his texts were bundles created specifically for his school/instructor, so I wasn't able to find them via the usual sources. I did manage to save $150 over the school bookstore price, so I was very happy with that savings. I would have liked to save more, but hey, $500 in books is better than $650. I personally don't care for e-books for myself for texts because I can't make notes. I did purchase a Kindle for my daughter for her birthday and I plan on borrowing it and trying out a few books on it. Maybe that will change my mindset about e-books. Thanks again for all the great suggestions. I have bookmarked them all for future use!

Originally Posted by marianne202

Thanks for all your help! Unfortunately, two of his texts were bundles created specifically for his school/instructor, so I wasn't able to find them via the usual sources. I did manage to save $150 over the school bookstore price, so I was very happy with that savings. I would have liked to save more, but hey, $500 in books is better than $650. I personally don't care for e-books for myself for texts because I can't make notes. I did purchase a Kindle for my daughter for her birthday and I plan on borrowing it and trying out a few books on it. Maybe that will change my mindset about e-books. Thanks again for all the great suggestions. I have bookmarked them all for future use!

I think e-books are nice, most allow you to highlight without issue. In fact I prefer the e-books if I will be highlighting since I hate marking up books! (I'm a book collector so it just gets under my skin.) Where I can't use e-books I take notes on paper outside the book anyway. The rental e-books can be a pain since they go away when the rental is over but so would the real book.

I have one of my textbooks in kindle format, and it works pretty well. It is a bit cumbersome to move back and forth between chapters on the kindle device itself, if you're looking to do that, but you can easily highlight things if you wish. Another nice kindle feature is when you're using the kindle app on your computer (instead of the device itself) you can highlight text and cut & paste from it, so if you're writing a report or something, you can easily quote from your sources. It even inserts it into your document with the proper APA/MLA quoting format and citations. You don't even need to own an actual Kindle to use that.

Merlin, that is fabulous news about the Kindle features for e-books. Now you have really peaked my interest so now I will have to try it. Although, I'm almost done with my school adventures...at least for the time being! It would have been a nice feature to use when I was doing all those reports and essays and I have done over the last 3 years. Thanks again! I think I will have him it try it. My son is very tech oriented so he may love this option.

Safari Books Online - Home

They are the Netflix of tech books. They do not have college textbooks though. For that I recommend coursesmart.com as well. I have rented a few books there and just rented a book from them yesterday for $50 which costs about $120 through Amazon.com. Since I only need it for the duration of the course, I don't mind renting it.

What I might suggest is to use safaribooksonline as ryoder said, but instead of paying $50 to rent a book. Pay $20 to join the IEEE and Computer society then you get access to it for 1 year. Or the same can be done through the Association of computing machinery. They also offer element K IT course which some can be converted to credit through ACE.
computer.org which is part of IEEE.org
acm.org

Originally Posted by ryoder

Safari Books Online - Home

They are the Netflix of tech books. They do not have college textbooks though. For that I recommend coursesmart.com as well. I have rented a few books there and just rented a book from them yesterday for $50 which costs about $120 through Amazon.com. Since I only need it for the duration of the course, I don't mind renting it.