MBA Textbooks and Moores Law

Have any of you ever heard of Moores law? It's basically a principle that an Intel engineer came up with long ago that states that as time progresses, electronics become smaller, faster and cheaper. This is why your 10 ghz Octocore laptop costs 20 bucks today, when back in the days of the 60s and 70s computers were the size of a room and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunatley incoming MBA students, you will find that the exact opposite is true of textbooks. While, yes, your textbooks do get smaller over the years, they also get more expensive! Not only that, but they get more boring...less pictures, and more monotone color schemes (probably to reflect the attitude of progressively jaded MBA students). Case and point? Last Quarter my Accounting Book, full of brightly colored pictures with people happily doing Accounting (yeah, i dont know what was wrong with them either) was around $120 dollars. Today on the other hand, I purchased a marketing book that is no more than an inch thick (Ive seen children's books bigger!), does not contain one picture (but lots of exciting tables and diagrams!), comes in an exciting color scheme of grey and burgundy, and costs...get this...$140 dollars. There was no way I was paying $140 dollars to the campus bookstore for that book!

Which brings us to my tip of the day. Incoming MBA students, when buying textbooks, avoid the campus bookstore like the plague! They are a rip off and really overpriced...so what should you do? Ive provided some great sites to help you find a textbook for cheaper.

1. Amazon.com/Half.com - Usually offer prices about 10% cheaper than the campus bookstore.

2. Chegg.com - rent the textbook instead of buying it! Like Netflix for textbooks (Usually around 40$ a semester/book)

3. Thrift store - Sounds weird, but if your class is entirely note based, just grab a textbook on the subject at your local thriftstore. I spent 3$ on my economics textbook last quarter (and, yes, i got a good grade)


4.Craigslist - Can be a bit trickier than other online sources, but you can find one for dirt cheap.


5.Other MBA students - Cut a deal with a classmate, it will often be cheaper.


6. Library - Usually (and surprisingly, most professors wont tell you this), a textbook is kept on reserve at the library. Since you have the textbook and are already at the library, you might as well do the work!


Hope i helped you guys save some bucks. Until next time...