Textbooks for Back-to-School

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I was recently asked to write a page on textbooks, and although it may seem to be a little early to be thinking about back-to-school, given the lead time required for search engines to find and index pages it is if anything a little late -- at least from my point of view.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention to all my friends, fans, and family who actually go out of their way to purchase Amazon.com items through my links, that "all links are created equal." Amazon used to pay a premium to associates for items purchased directly from a product link, but that has been discontinued. Now any time you visit Amazon.com by clicking on one of my links, a "cookie" is set containing the appropriate Amazon Associate I.D. and any purchases made during the next 24 hours are credited to me, as long as the cookie is not reset by clicking on someone else's link.

The reason I mention that at this time is that Amazon has some more advanced seach functions for specific textbooks on their texbook homepage. It is often important to get the exact textbook assigned including the correct edition, since minor variations will cause a problem if for instance "pages 90 - 135" are assigned.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that textbooks are a very specialized market. In the "publish or perish" world of academia, many professors will be teaching from their own books, which are sometimes very low-volume items. While Amazon.com is usually an extremely economical source for books in particular, there are cases where the local campus bookstore will save you a few dollars, particularly if you are looking for used textbooks. If finances are an issue (and they usually are) you should check all available sources before making your purchase.

If you are selling a used textbook, you will often be able to get more by selling it through Amazon, although the process is more like selling an item on eBay than simply taking a book to the campus bookstore and taking whatever they are currently paying for that title.