Do you/Did you sell back textbooks in your major?
 

When I came to college, I told myself I wanted to keep textbooks in my major for future reference and because I love my major so much they will be fun to read. However, these are also the more expensive books, and worth more to sell back. This semester, if I sell back all my books I will get a little under $50. My Child Development book alone is worth $88 dollars if I sell on amazon. I need the cash but I will be working full time. I can't decide if I should keep these text books or not, especially seeing as psychology is one of those subjects where these texts are getting updated and revised almost yearly with new information. What do you think? Did you keep text books in your major, and was it worth it? Or should I sell it back?

Initially, I didn't sell textbooks pertaining to my major. I kept them thinking that I would, most certainly, use them. But, about 3 years after graduating I realized I hadn't cracked a single one of them, so I quickly put them on ebay.

Sell them. They take up space and quickly become obsolete as more current books take their place. If you need reference materials in the future, your employer can order them for you. :)

I not only didn't hold onto my books, by the time I was graduating I would figure out how many pages of the book the professor actually wanted us to read and made photocopies if it was more cost-effective. I got so annoyed at professors having me buy entire books to read one chapter. I could spend $5 or $10 in photocopies and be miles ahead of buying even the cheapest of used books. It took some quality time in front of the copy machine in the library, but it was worth it!

I'd be scanning the various e-book sources as well for any alternatives to those ridiculously overpriced books. But that wasn't an option for me in the 80's. ;)

And ADPiUCF is exactly right. Unless it's a Shakespeare text or the Human Anatomy book that every pre-med major has to have, I wouldn't keep any reference books. They all change too much to worry about.

My situation is probably not typical, since I'm pursuing academia, but I did end up borrowing and returning/reselling several textbooks that, now, I kind of wish I'd kept. Granted, the types of books I'm talking about (music) are not updated nearly as often (or given updates with as much critical information) as yours are. If you think your current editions will be outdated in a couple years, it's probably best to sell them now while they still have some resale value (which will tank once a new edition comes out) and spring for the newer editions if/when you need them.

I also felt that I would be keeping my textbooks from grad school, but after I graduated I realized that I would probably never look at them and so decided to sell them. I wish I had sold them soon, as the constant new editions lead to my book losing a lot of value. Amazon usually gives the best prices for selling your books back, but keep in mind that they often reimburse in the form of gift cards and not cash.

Also, borrowing from the library.

If you have a school FB group, or anything try posting on there. One of my colleges is small (around 3K) and people post the books they are trying to sell. Its a better deal than the bookstore. I'd suggest never selling back to the campus bookstore. They tend to be a rip off just about everywhere.

The campus bookstore is the biggest rip off on this campus. There are rep's for a company called Belltower Books walking around, and the one rep offered me $1 for a book the bookstore is offering $10 for, so I am skipping that route. Last semester I sold all my books back on Amazon and had no problems, and I like that I can set my own price based on the condition of the book. I bought this book on amazon from a private seller who listed it in "like-new" condition and the spine isn't even fully cracked open because i never once used this book for class this semester. I will probably end up selling it. Thanks everyone!! :D

Yeah, I did plenty of that too.

Now, if I could only get my husband to get rid of his books that he keeps for "reference." You know, because it's important to have a full personally library of books about the Knights Templar, religious conspiracy and comparative religion.

I kept 1 engineering book. I sold all the other ones back. I didn't want to be reminded of the torture I put myself through. I sold my books from my graduate studies on half.com. I would sell the books but not to the bookstore. Either post them for sale on the student boards or on Amazon or Half.com

Yeah, we have a box of econ textbooks. Lord knows why...

One of the women in the local alumnae chapter made a pretty flower like design with one of her most hated textbooks. She curled the pages into cones of various lengths and hot glued (I think) them into a flower idea. It's hanging on her wall and is really cool.

OMG! I think my husband must be your husband's brother. I have begged him to throw away his journalism and broadcast texts that haven't at all become irrelevant since he graduated. In 1993.

My husband graduated from college 25 years ago and it's only within the past five years that I wrestled his engineering textbooks from his cold, dead fingers (a slight exaggeration, but it makes better reading :) ). The damn things must have weighed 50 pounds all told and we dragged them all up and down the eastern seaboard with us while he was in the Navy. Finally, I said ENOUGH! If KillarneyBud2 wants to major in engineering, we'll buy her her own damn textbooks!

I think I held on to maybe two or three college textbooks (none of which were in my major) and maybe one or two books from law school. All of the others were sold.

That sounds cool! One of my english text books isn't even worth anything online. There must be a new edition being released or something. It's worth like $5 online, and my college bookstore isn't buying it back.

I actually work 7 hours a week in the library so I could use the textbooks on reserve in there, but not every professor has the textbooks on reserve. That's what I did this semester with my Western Humanities books though and it worked perfectly. I'm kinda done buying books, it's such a waste for most professors haha.

Agreed with the bold.

In my major (marketing), there are a few principles that still hold true (ex. 4 Ps), but the industry changes so rapidly that most of the "best practices" that are mentioned become useless within a year.

The books that I kept after graduating were "leisure" books from a reading or poetry class that I took. I held on to them so that I could re-read them and digest the information without the stress of "OMG I HAVE A TEST ABOUT THIS TOMORROW"

Mathematics major here.
 

I don't think I sold *any* of the books in mathematics major back, but did so for many of the books outside my major. Up until my senior year, I was intending to go to Grad School and so kept them as idea sources for areas of concentration. My senior year I decided I had enough of school and decided to get a job in Computer Programming (which I had sort of kept as a minor)...

In the higher level mathematics courses (beyond Differential Equations) the use of specific textbooks tended to be spotty (the courses weren't necessarily offered two semesters in a row and different profs chose to use different text books.

The ultimate in "non-sellability" was the professor in General Topology (Grad level course) who decided that he wanted to use a book he owned printed in the 1920s as his primary textbook (and yes, this can be done in Mathematics) and tracked down the company who owned the copyright for the book. (The original publisher had been bought out a long time ago). While they weren't willing to print the book, they were willing to let the Professor make copies.

I still enjoy paging through my mathematics text books, but know I won't be able to get too deep in them unless I'm willing to sit down and do the proofs in them. (I'm talking things like Topology, Graph Theory and Projective Geometry).

I've keep my books. Great reference material.

I got rid of all of my books because I hated my majors.

But, when I still liked them, I sold the gen-ed books, like Calculus, and passed the major specific ones down the chapter. I don't know if that's just my helpful nature, but I always felt that younger guys could use my books more than I could.

Keeping my gen ed, music, and education books weren't worth it, but I'm glad I kept my English handbook, atlas (great classroom resource), and children's books.

I think I am selling the child development book. Even if I continue with psychology, I know I don't want to go into child psychology. I hated the class, and it's worth at least $80 on Amazon. Thanks for the advice :)

I kept a few major anthologies (Chaucer, Shakespeare, American Literature) in which I had written in the margins. The works in my Chaucer anthology were published in Middle English and I had translated nearly the entire anthology word-for-word (or phrase-by-phrase), and all of my writing books (creative writing, style books and handbooks, editing, etc.).

Interestingly, I have referred to many of my college "text books" at some point over the past 20 years for both work and personal writing.

When I was a little kid, we use to visit my aunt's in Perth Amboy, NJ. I always stayed in my cousin's room because he was away at college and was in awe of the big bookcase filled with all of his books. My aunt explained that they were his college books and it was the tradition to keep all of the ones in your major.

I also remembered that there was a nice black mug with a gold shield on it at the top of the bookcase, which really impressed me because I was into knights at the time.

When I went to college, my experience was different than Naraht's in that most of my Math courses were two semesters long and there was one book for both semesters. Especially in grad school when I had two semesters of Real Analysis, Modern Algebra, Topology, Mathematical Logic and Numerical Analysis.

I still have all of my Math books and I also have a nice black mug with a TKE coat of arms, just like my cousin.

Do *you* have a young cousin who is into knights? :)

Kinda'. My cousin's son is a Sigma Chi and they are into the Norman Shield thing.