I’m in my last semester of grad school, and am proud to say that I haven’t bought a textbook in years.. Since I got ripped off in my first year of university by buying brand new textbooks for bullshit subjects such as marketing and management, and realized that every book has a brand new edition every year (which makes it impossible to sell it after you’re done), I said “That’s all you’ll get from me.”

If you are studying geography, history, philosophy, art and/or any other social science, the libraries are full of old edition textbooks with the exact same material covered. Chances are, they will even contain the same images. So why dish out $150 for a Principles of Macroeconomics textbooks, when these principles haven’t changed (whether that’s good or bad is a different discussion).

Also, why do we have the Internet, if not to get free information (nothing is free, but I won’t get into that either). Everything you need is available online. Ebooks can be easily found for downloads. Plus, Google Books has millions of books scanned – some in full and some with restricted pages.. But then again, don’t pretend like you read every single page anyways..

For example, my Behavioural Econ textbook costs $100, and I found a full scan of it on Google Books. More money to spend on shopping, I guess.