less expensive international edition of textbooks?

[Sunshine State Sue]

I need to purchase a Biology textbook for ds's CC biology class. I generally check http://www.addall.com. I am finding the text via the ISBN costs $50 for an international edition and $80 for a non-intl edition.

 

Anybody else run into this and know if it matters? Same ISBN.

 

Thanks!

[Tohru]

The context is the same, but the quality is lesser on the international edition, ie: softcover vs. hardcover, thinner pages, cheaper ink.

 

I've bought international editions in the past and they worked fine for the course, but resell value is generally a lot less.

[TheHomeScientist]

I need to purchase a Biology textbook for ds's CC biology class. I generally check www.addall.com. I am finding the text via the ISBN costs $50 for an international edition and $80 for a non-intl edition.

 

Anybody else run into this and know if it matters? Same ISBN.

 

Thanks!

 

You might ask the instructor if an earlier edition would suffice. The changes between editions are usually very minor, intended to force students to purchase an expensive current edition rather than a used edition. A book whose new edition sells for $100+ often sells for just a few dollars used in the preceding edition.

 

A lot of professors/instructors feel their students' pain and do their best to accommodate older editions. One chemistry professor I know distributes his notes for the current edition and at least two or three earlier editions.

[Brenda in MA]

The international edition worked fine for my son for a psychology text. However, the international version of his engineering text had all the problems using metric units, so it did not work out and he ended up having to buy the regular text as well. I agree with emailing the prof and seeing if an earlier edition of the book might work.

 

Best of luck,

Brenda

[Gwen in VA]

Dd1 ran into problems with an international edition -- while the text was identical, some of the problems weren't the same.

[Nan in Mass]

You might ask the instructor if an earlier edition would suffice. The changes between editions are usually very minor, intended to force students to purchase an expensive current edition rather than a used edition. A book whose new edition sells for $100+ often sells for just a few dollars used in the preceding edition.

 

A lot of professors/instructors feel their students' pain and do their best to accommodate older editions. One chemistry professor I know distributes his notes for the current edition and at least two or three earlier editions.

 

We have saved a considerable amount of money doing this over the years. Older son's roommate gave middle son his textbooks because they were following the same program. He gave youngest his graphing calculator (lol very happily because he was never going to need it again). Middle son gave youngest his community college textbooks because they took the same courese. The roommates books worked just fine. Out of the community college books, the speech text was different because the prof was different, the chemistry professor (same prof as middle son) said the editions were significantly different and the differences mattered but he was willing to lend youngest his own book for those spots, and the pre-calc prof (different) was willing to warn youngest when he needed to use the online book not the hard copy (many problem sets). We had to buy the online half of the textbook but still saved lots of money.

 

The prof's my sons know are very sympathetic about the problem of textbook prices, in our experience. My older sons' college, for example, negotiated to have just a piece of a textbook printed in a very cheap format for their oceanography class because they would only be using part of the book.

 

Nan