Price: $110.42 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.

Well, it's typically a chemical engineering graduate text, however, the class was both listed as chemical / mechanical (that's me...). It was a fluids course.

When are some enterprising hackers going to hack into publishers' systems and steal them all? Guess they don't care too much about textbooks.;):D

Some guy did make a website where he was posting torrents of textbooks. Sadly the guy was based in the US so the arm of the publishers quickly came in and shut him down.

I know the piratebay has textbooks, but they're outdated. Definitely need a piratebay for textbooks :P Until then international editions of books will hold me over especially the big warnings that say I am breaking laws if I use the book in the United States!

It seems to me that they could sell kindle text books for about 50-75% of the current price and still make a ton of money. They could continue to revise them to kill off the used market (it would actually be much easier, so the could change them every year).

im not a big fan of the kindle and dont readling books on a computer.

Neither am I really, but when I'm traveling for a couple of weeks and want to bring some books to read it's a lot easier to carry one device than several books. Also, I don't have to give box-loads of books away every year because they are taking over my office.

Check with your professors to see whether earlier editions are ok. Often times the bookstore will tell the professor that they can older order the newest editions for the class when there are still earlier used editions available online that the professor is happy for you to use. For instance, one of my textbooks in the current edition runs about $100. Used copies of previous editions are available online for $1. I am totally happy with students buying earlier editions for most of my textbooks.

I spent $670 for this semester. 15 books (all used) 13 soft-copy, all except one under 300 pages. I used half.com and amazon. Seems pricey if you ask me, but I still saved $300.

Looks like things have not changed in over 40 years. I had the same situation when I attended school back in the 'old days'.

The Book Store was in private hands at my school, and I guess that is still the general rule.

We will know when the Internet has met its' potential when the price of books becomes reasonable.