How to Get Free Textbooks Tips for Students

Let's start with techniques to procure 100% free textbooks, and then move on to talking about various penny-shaving techniques.

Freebies:

Review Copies. Publishers regularly send out gratis review or 'press' copies of books to various periodicals so as to garner some (hopefully positive) publicity for the tome in question. After procuring a list of required textbooks, you can then note their publishers and proceed to find out the mailing addresses and/or fax numbers for their publicity departments (browse their websites or call/email and ask them). For instance, Harvard University Press' site states "if you would like to request a review copy of one our books, please: Fax your request on your publication's letterhead to..." (hup.harvard.edu/journalists/review_copies.html).

Next, design a little logo for your periodical, and write a full (http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/letters/l/bl_block_p.htm) or modified (http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/letters/l/bl_mblock_p.htm) block letter, providing a brief explanation of your periodical (target audience, numbers of subscribers, etc), as well as the request for the book(s) which are to be reviewed in an upcoming issue (don't forget to include the ISBN in your request). Keep the letter pithy and short; it shouldn't exceed one page.

You can then proceed to either snail-mail or fax your request to the publisher. Unless you go the full nine yards and register a domain name that matches the name of your periodical, I wouldn't recommend emailing the publisher, as a request for a professional book coming from a yahoo account may raise a few eyebrows.

After receiving your book, if you want to remain on good terms with the publisher so as to be able to request more textbooks in the future, go ahead and write a small review of the book and send it back to the publisher, complete with a little personal note attached saying something along the lines of 'here's an advance copy of the review, it'll appear in next quarter's issue!' Publishers want copies of reviews (particularly those of the positive, but not fawning, variety) to use excerpts from them in their own publicity stunts, as well as in those 'Praise For...' pages oft seen in books.

[A small aside: your review copy will come with a nifty 'promo sheet' providing bullet-style points of the main features of the book. These things are literally designed for reviewers who don't get around to reading the full book anyway, so feel free to use these points in your own review. In fact, if you do a search for all reviews of a particular book, you may start noticing that many of them actually say the exact same shit verbatim...now you know why ;)].

Nota Bene: Press review copies are not the same thing as professor/instructor review copies. Many textbook publishers also offer review copies of books to instructors who are considering using the books for their courses (thereby, at least in theory, guaranteeing the publisher fuckloads of that sexy green). The catch, however, is that these review copies are often time-based trials, meaning you may have to send the book back after 60 days or so, and require you to provide all sorts of fun info like your department/university, phone number, etc. Though if you're interested in testing the waters in this area, go right ahead :) (for an example of instructor review copy offers, as opposed to the aforementioned press review copies, see www.sagepub.com/reviewCopy.nav).

Shoplifted Copies. Stealing (err...liberating excess surplus or reasserting use value rights of reclaimed brainwork commodities) books is easy as shit. Beginning and aspiring shoplifters would do well to start out jacking treeware to get their game down and their confidence up.

Most books do not come with any sort of electronic article surveillance (EAS) anti-theft measures. For the most part, they do not have tags both on the inside/outside like CDs or DVDs. There is, however, a relatively new craze fueled by all this recent RFID noise called source-tagging. A very small percentage of books in the market today thus potentially have a small RFID chip imbedded in their spine. This is not the same thing as the blatantly obvious magnetic strip found in library book spines (and discussed in the previous section). Chances are you will not be able to determine if the book has this spine source-tagging.

The good news, though, is twofold. First of all, I have never seen or heard of a source-tagged book being out in the wild, that is to say outside of being talked about in trade publications, these contraptions are apparently not actually being used in books as of yet (note that I say in books, they are certainly already being used in DVDs, CDs, and so on), but as the technology itself exists, and is clearly being marketed for the purpose of inventory/loss prevention, this may all change very soon. This then brings us to the second piece of good news: as these source-tags are based on radio-frequencies, all one has to do to defeat them is wrap the book completely in a few layers of tin foil, or place it in a bag/backpack that is also completely lined with impermeable foil. Shoplifters call this a magic bag, physicists prefer to call it a Faraday cage. Look it up in a physics textbook you just procured :-P. Alternatively, you can just run a knife through the tag to break the circuit and render the tag impotent.

Aside from the 90% of books with no protection, and the 1% (I'm pulling numbers out of a hat...which is to say my ass) of potentially source-tagged books, a small percentage of books have a primitive stick-on RF barcode sticker. These puppies typically look like so:

Figure 4. A RF barcode sticker that functions as a security device, complete with a tank circuit on its back. The tag can be made useless by breaking the circuit, for instance by slicing through the sticker with a razorblade or Xacto knife.


The shiny circuit side is usually adhesive and is either stuck unto the inside/outside covers of the book, or simply tossed betwixt the pages, without the paper from the sticky side even being removed. In case of the former, one can easily either peel the tag off or use the aforementioned magic bag technique. 

In case of the latter, simply flip through the book and toss out the tags (keep in mind that there may be more than one in the same book), or—better yet—stick the tags on unsuspecting consumers to help create confusion in the store as the EAS towers start beeping each time every other shopper walks out ;).

Remove the tag (if any) or foil-wrap the tome you desire, and then simply walk out holding the book by your side. One may wish to use a random receipt (that nonetheless obviously resembles those given out from the store, i.e. go fish one out of the trash outside) as a credibility prop, and either have the receipt prominently sticking out of the books, or (even better) pretend to be carefully looking over the receipt—to make sure you didn't get scammed by the store, of course!—as you walk out.

Nota Bene: The advantage of lifting books from a college bookstore around the start of the semester is that the places will be crowded as all hell. The disadvantage is that this may also be the time the college wastes more of your tuition on hiring special loss prevention officers (typically uniformed so as to serve as grisly, intimidating deterrents) to watch over the college bookstore. 

If you're therefore feeling particularly nervous, fuck the high-stress college scene altogether and go over to your favourite retail chain with minimal-to-the-point-of-being-virtually-nonexistent security (Barnes & Noble comes to mind in the US). If the retail chain store doesn't have the particular textbooks that you need (they probably wont), you'll want to be sure to go there a few weeks before you'll actually need the books for classes or whatnot, and have them place an order for you at the store. They'll ask for a name/address/phone, all of which aren't verified, so no worries there.

'Found' Copies. Walk around campus. Look around cafeteria tables, libraries, student halls/commons rooms, study kiosks, and so on. Chances are you'll find a bunch of textbooks that have been forgotten. 

Hell, why not have a try at the lost and found as well. Books from courses you're not taking can still be appropriated and then exchanged for cash at college book buyback events at the ends of semesters, or sold online. Want a copy of the teacher's version of the book? Stop by zir office when ze's (gotta love these 'gender-neutralizing' pronouns ;)) not around and help yourself.

And yes, this involves stealing shit from your "fellow students" (all of whom are marvelous, virtuous people, may we all be so blessed as to be given the opportunity to shower in their shit...that surely goes without saying), so if you've got any moral hang-ups about this particular technique, there's plenty of others offered in this text. Simply gloss over this one and spend the time fuming about it masturbating to your Mother Teresa pics instead.

Other Digital Copies. Aside from scanned books, you can also check out projects like Wikimedia's Free Textbook Project (now called Wikibooks), at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page. Most "classics" used in classes that are out of copyright are also legally available from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org), which currently has 20,000+ ebooks online. You can also take a quick look through the online databases that your school may have access to (see the free ebooks and journals section above), on the off chance that a book used in the course comes to mind. The NetLibrary database may be particularly handy if your college has a subscription to it.

Discounts:

Now that I've covered a few simple methods for procuring free textbooks, there are also a couple common sense things you can do to chop a few bucks off the cover price:

'Missing' Copies. After placing a bulk order from your online vendor of choice, wait a couple days after you receive all of the package(s) for your order, and then call up customer service and start complaining. "What kinda game are you sneaky motherfuckers trying to play here? Only 11 out of my 15 books showed up, planning on sending the others any time soon?" Obviously you don't want to be quite that rude, but you do want to come off as being rightly pissed off at the merchant for fucking up your order. 

Adding in something along the lines of "my classes start in two days!" will also net you free overnight shipping for the 'missing' copies. It should be equally obvious that you'll only be able to pull this con once from the same company, and that it is most effective on bulk orders, where a certain percentage of bungling is only to be expected. You can then return the duplicate to a bookstore for store credit, or hawk them online or to "fellow students" (there's that term again...) for a cheaper price in exchange for some good ol' cashito.

Used Copies. The used textbooks at the local college bookstore are going to be overpriced as shit, no doubt there. Visit a local used bookstore outside of the college, and you're bound to find some cheaper buys. 

The standard big wheelers like Amazon and B&N also offer used books, as do auction sites and sites devoted to selling used books like www.campusbooks.com or www.urshelf.com. But now we're drifting off into the world of the dreadfully mundane, so time to bring this section to a close :).