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UC Davis FAQ: Buying Textbooks

It’s always fun to see what sorts of search queries lead people to a website. Occasionally phrases completely unrelated to your website lead people over anyway. We’ve been keeping an eye on our search engine referrals and we noticed a number of people landing on our blog posts with questions about UC Davis life. Often the questions aren’t directly answered on the landing page, even though the keywords appear there.

We thought we’d try to answer those questions more directly in a series called "UC Davis FAQ." We’ll take some of these questions and flesh them out in a series of posts. Today’s post is on textbooks: where to buy them and how to get cheap ones.

New and Used Textbooks: Saving Money

Do I have to buy books for my class? Where can I buy used books?

When most students think about saving money for college, they imagine the money going towards tuition and rent. But textbooks are an expense that sometimes takes students by surprise. Textbooks can be expensive but you don’t always have to buy new books each quarter.

Buying Used Textbooks

Just because a textbook is required doesn't always mean you have to buy it new. The UC Davis Bookstore often offers a limited number of used books for each class; the number of available used books depends on how popular the class is, how many people sold back their copies, and whether the same book and edition is being used each quarter.

Other bookstores around town might also sell your textbooks. Off-Campus Books on A Street at the corner of Third (directly across the street from the Death Star) sells UCD used textbooks, and Culpepper Used Books in the University Mall on Russell Blvd also sells used books.

You can also find used and cheap(er) books at DavisText.com, a website designed by UC Davis students to give Aggies a cheaper option for textbooks. DavisText.com uses Amazon.com's service but it may be difficult to find the right edition or specialty books.

Other Alternatives: Sharing, Borrowing, and Going Retro

Sometimes you can get away with buying slightly older books for less. Publishing companies often publish new editions of textbooks that don’t contain many changes so using an older edition may not matter. However, sometimes textbooks undergo major changes between editions. Ask instructors if the listed edition is necessary or if you can buy an older (but recent) edition instead.

If the above suggestions aren’t working for you but you really need to save some cash, try going in on an expensive textbook with a friend in the class. You can also try posting a note on the ASUCD Used Book Board in the Coffee House, on UCDLJ or Uloop, or asking your friends who have taken the class in the past. Nice instructors will make any required and recommended textbooks available on reserve at Shields Library, so be sure to talk to your professors about your options.

Getting Your Money Back (For Next Quarter's Books!)

To help you get back some of the money you spent at the beginning of the quarter, at the end of each quarter the bookstore holds a Textbook Buyback fair where you can sell back your used textbooks. Check the bookstore’s Buyback webpage for the schedule at the end of each quarter. ASUCD hosts a different textbook sales event called the ASUCD Book Exchange where students can set their own price and sell their old textbooks directly to other students; ASUCD gets a 5% surcharge from books sold.

Readers: Textbooks aren't the only required reading

Textbooks aren't always the only required reading: many classes also require readers, where the instructor selects a number of articles and sections from various books, journals, and other sources and compiles them into a bound collection sold at copy shops such as the Davis Copy Shop (formerly called Navin’s), Copyland, and Campus Copies in the MU.

Instructors sometimes use the same readers from quarter to quarter, and students are often willing to sell them for cheap (check the UCDLJ, Uloop, the Used Book Board, and other community listings). But before you buy, check with your instructor to make sure they haven't created a new reader with different articles.

For other FAQ, check back here at the OneGate blog. Also check out OneGate for UC Davis!