Hello everyone and thank you for stopping by my thread. So college for me starts on Monday and I've gotten to look at my text book list and there are several and none of them are cheap. Now if I had aid or a loan that would cover it that would be great but I don't, my loans didn't even cover tution and I don't qualify for aid even though I am broke. So I have come here to see if maybe you have a copy of these books or know a place I can get them for really cheap because otherwise I'm at a bit of a loss on how to afford them all. I'll post the name and isbn of the books, thank you.

MATHEMATICAL PALETTE

I always check Amazon and Half.com. You can always rent them as it is often cheaper. This doesn't help now, but I use swagbucks.com, zoombucks.com, and mypoints.com and save up my points for Amazon giftcards. Then I use the giftcards to help buy my books.

I know a website, www.bigwords.com, that allows you to compare textbook prices across different sites (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, half.com, etc.).  It's quite helpful to know what website has the best price.

I personally don't like rentals, most times I feel they are a ripoff that only benefits the rental company.  Many times the difference is not worth it (I think).  For example, I just checked the three books you listed here.  For one of them, the difference between rental and buy used was $10.  When you take into consideration that if you buy it you might be able to resell it, the rental is really not worth it.

Indogirl mentioned swagbucks, etc.  I have an account with Swagbucks so I know you can get gift cards.  However, in order to quickly accue points you need to spend a lot of time and/or money on the site (in my experience).

If you have many credits here you can sell them for Amazon cards or Paypal money that you can use to purchase books.

A word of caution about the last book on the list.  The title says Custom.  I had one of those in a college class.  It was custom made for that class.  The school had the publishing company make a book with certain chapters for certain books.  Therefore, the contents were not the same as the "normal" edition.  So this is something to be very careful about so you don't end up with a book you can't use.

You might also check with the professor to see if he/she allows older versions of books.  One of those listed there is from 2012.  An older edition should be significantly cheaper and sometimes the differences between editions are minimal.

Good luck.

a coworker of mine got one of her books cheap on craigslist.  If you're in a larger-college town, you might have good luck there!