Cheaper textbooks/technical books via bigwords.com and used.addall.com

Here is another great resource for finding the cheapest source of textbooks.

Both bigwords and addall look at and compare prices on various sources for books, including amazon, abebooks, alibris, half.com, and many other booksellers, so you don't have to do it manually.

I still found one book that was cheaper via addall that didn't show in bigwords, but it looks like bigwords might work better if you needed multiple books that might come from the same source (and thus save you money on shipping). Bigwords also seems to know about some promotions/coupons not mentioned on addall.

http://www.bigwords.com/

For instance, here are various copies of David C. Black's SystemC book that are available:

http://uber-bot.bigwords.com/details/book/SystemC_From_the_Ground_Up_Second_Edition/9780387699578/0387699570

http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/RefineRare.fcgi?id=100927113035342486

(Look out for international editions unless you know what you're doing)

Cheers,
Connie

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Connie L. O'Dell <odellconnie@gmail.com> wrote:

The trick with textbooks is to obtain the ISBN for the book (for instance, by looking up the class on the school bookstore's website to find the recommended texts and ISBNs), look it up on amazon just to make sure you know which edition it is, and then to look it up on used.addall.com like shown below, and sort the results from low price to high. The prices vary wildly, as it collects prices from all used book vendors and possibly Canada and UK as well (these are sometimes cheaper even with shipping). If the description on addall doesn't say something funny like "this is really edition 1" when you know you need edition 2, then it should be OK. Conditions vary, but I have never seen a book come that was not usable. If a CD is supposed to be included then you should check the description to make sure it is.

It is best to assume that the book may take a week to come if in the US, and 2 weeks if outside the US, unless the vendor offers express shipping.

It is OK to buy books without an ISBN (by title, author, *and* edition), if you are *absolutely positive* about all this information. Older editions also sometimes work for non-technical classes.

If I do not find a better price than the campus bookstore on a very expensive ($85+) or new book (these tend to be math or science books), I will also try looking on ebay, which sometimes has books for better or worse prices, it varies, but it is more complicated. If you are ever seriously buying things on ebay auctions, I'd suggest learning about esnipe.com.

Cheers,
Connie

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