Where do you purchase books? Forum

[jdubb990]

I will be a 1L this coming fall. From my understanding, casebooks, E&E's, etc. can all become very expensive. I was just wondering if stores like Barnes and Nobles or Border's will be able to order casebooks and E&E's for me? Will I likely be limited to my law schools bookstore, or are there other specialty booksellers who deal specifically with law related material?

[shutterbug]

I will be a 1L this coming fall. From my understanding, casebooks, E&E's, etc. can all become very expensive. I was just wondering if stores like Barnes and Nobles or Border's will be able to order casebooks and E&E's for me? Will I likely be limited to my law schools bookstore, or are there other specialty booksellers who deal specifically with law related material?

I've found that even with shipping costs, Amazon's prices win out on about 95% of casebooks and E&E's.

[dood]

...

[JG Hall]

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[tortbook]

The time to buy E&E's is now. Look at how many are for sale on Amazon right now.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_ ... x=examples+

[RVP11]

The time to buy E&E's is now.

WTF? No.

[clint4law]

The time to buy E&E's is now.

WTF? No.

why not?

[Renzo]

The time to buy E&E's is now.

WTF? No.

Lets be clear. The time to buy them is now. The time to read them is much, much later.

[RVP11]

The time to buy E&E's is now.

WTF? No.

Lets be clear. The time to buy them is now. The time to read them is much, much later.

I don't even think the time to buy them (or anything) is now. You can't know which supplements will be helpful until you know who you have, at the very least. Often you can't even tell until you're a month or so into the class. With some professors you won't need a supplement at all and you're just adding reading that you don't really need.

I bought a ton of supplements in May/June before 1L and most of them got very little use. As good as the CivPro E&E is supposed to be, it was one of them that I found superfluous.

[JG Hall]

.

[Renzo]

The time to buy E&E's is now.

WTF? No.

Lets be clear. The time to buy them is now. The time to read them is much, much later.

I don't even think the time to buy them (or anything) is now. You can't know which supplements will be helpful until you know who you have, at the very least. Often you can't even tell until you're a month or so into the class. With some professors you won't need a supplement at all and you're just adding reading that you don't really need.

I bought a ton of supplements in May/June before 1L and most of them got very little use. As good as the CivPro E&E is supposed to be, it was one of them that I found superfluous.

I suppose. I've just noticed that used copies will cost 10x what they do now near the end of the semseter.

[Matthies]

barristerbooks.com

Its not the cheapest place out there, but they have many hard to find supplements, plus they ship wicked fast.

Also I need to e-mail Ken about this, but on anouther website i used to frequent BB would give like a 25% dicount ocde verey few months to forum mebers.

[dood]

...

[BobSacamano]

Funny and true story:

1. Ordered casebook from Amazon for $120
2. Casebook doesn't get here but class starts
3. Quickly ordered an old edition of casebook on Amazon for $4, just as a temp solution
4. The 1st casebook is finally determined as "lost" after MIA for 1.5 months and I get refunded the $120
5. Finish the semester with the old casebook and own civ pro

Lesson learned: I'm only buying old editions of casebooks from now on at 3% of the current edition cost.
Projected savings: $4000 over the course of 2 years.

WIN?

Definite win. Except Con Law could get a little hairy.

[chicagolaw2013]

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/ar ... ripped-off

Don't know if any books I'll need are on either of the sites they list in this article (about midway down the page, they talk about college textbooks) but my friend that is finishing up undergrad uses that alibris site and saves a ton. He told me about a few texts that he got new for almost half off the list price.

[2013Hopeful]

I rent mine from http://www.chegg.com/ But I only do this for the semester long classes. For the year long classes I buy the books on Amazon or something similar.

[mikesterns]

When I went to law school I found amazon and half.com to be the best in terms of cost-savings. That aside, towards the end of law school I bought fewer and fewer books.

In Beat Law School, which I picked up on amazon recently, the author argues for spending the minimum on books and study aids. He advises getting older editions and finding the difference from the new edition, if any from Lexis or from friends. He talks about a kid who never bought casebooks and used the online statutes together with wikipedia and did just fine. That may be a bit extreme but I found that the costs of texts and study aids quickly got out of control and there are certainly ways of limiting the damage.

[seancarpe]

there's this new niche opening up in textbook market where you can rent them instead of buying them. most of the time its cheaper to rent than it is to buy and sell the book back to the campus bookstore (if they're taking it!). http://www.bookrenter.com and http://www.chegg.com are the vendors that seem to have the market down best. i just placed my order through chegg with this promotional coupon code someone gave me, CC127927. it gave me 5% off and an extra $5 for selling the books i bought from campus. (i've checked with the site and displaying the coupon code is fine).

the downside is they don't always have all the supplemental material and you can't write in the books/workbooks, but you can highlight and i've found making photocopies can get around this. anyways, just wanted to throw that resource out there--not a lot of people know about it and it really does save money.

[macattaq]

barristerbooks.com

Its not the cheapest place out there, but they have many hard to find supplements, plus they ship wicked fast.

Also I need to e-mail Ken about this, but on anouther website i used to frequent BB would give like a 25% dicount ocde verey few months to forum mebers.

They offer discounts on FB if you friend them, usually from a few weeks prior to the start of the semester, to a few weeks after. BB also offers looseleaf versions of some texts, for those interested in carrying only the necessary pages with them.

[clint4law]

when is a good time to buy our books?

[gwuorbust]

when is a good time to buy our books?

+1, right now or wait till classes start?