[brownsfan]

“Most of my engineering books were North of $200.
And if you go to sell them back, they give you around $30-40.”

Textbooks were a huge scam. I went back when tuition was reasonable, but books, that’s another story. They would change a few sentences here and there, then reorder the chapters to render older editions barely usable. Buy a new book, $150, but it used, $90, sell it back, $25.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

It’s a racket.

[Svartalfiar]

They would change a few sentences here and there, then reorder the chapters to render older editions barely usable. Buy a new book, $150, but it used, $90, sell it back, $25.

Actually, the main thing they did to make old editions unusable was to completely redo all the check-on-learning / homework questions. It's easy enough to use a textbook with mixed-up chapters, but if the homework doesn't line up with the assignment, that's the difficult part.

[Maine Mariner]

That is why I always recommend my students do not buy the most recent edition of a textbook; I assign the edition published just before the newest.