Buy the Older Edition Textbook and Save Money - A New Idea

$.18 Cents	$52.00

If you buy the older edition will you get all messed up because the two editions are substantially different?

Almost always - no. Publishers are so greedy and lazy and they know most students are idiots.

They know you're going to go out and buy whatever your teacher says, right?

Most new edition textbooks are almost exactly the same as the old edition. Like I said, the publishers are lazy. And greedy.

Sometimes, they just switch the pictures out and call it an ALL NEW EDITION. Sometimes, they'll update a chapter to reflect new information. Sometimes, they just add a sentence or two. Really. I've seen new editions where I couldn't actually tell what had been updated.

The problem is you can't predict when a publisher is going to rehaul the book and make a substantially different format, or change all the exercises and questions.

Substantial changes can goof up your homework and make it hard to read the assigned portions.

Because I can't predict which editions are true updates -- I buy the old edition and the new edition.

Then I compare them. If the new edition is functionally the same as the old edition -- I resell the new edition and keep the old.

Not only does this save me a crap load of money -- I've made money doing this. If you hit it just right, you can buy a used, new edition and resell it for a small profit.

Out of ten textbooks, only one or two are updated to the point where I've had to keep the new edition instead of the old.

Don't get ripped off by lazy, greedy publishers. Why should you pay an extra $100 dollars for an extra, lousy sentence at the end of one chapter?

An Example of Lazy Greedy Publishers

Let's compare this to the 2nd edition from 2008, which is .18 cents for a used copy. The chapters are the same. The text is the same. The questions and exercises are the same. Everything is the same! What makes this an update? I don't know. The new price? Oh, the picture on the cover is different?

There are things in the book that really need to be updated. Like the information about internet browsers, on page 151...

The two most popular browsers are Microsoft Explorer and AOL...

AOL? ha ha

The section on technology and the internet is shamefully outdated and yet ... this is the all new, 3rd edition textbook. And, it cost a lot of money. But, you do get that new cover graphic.