Break the Efollet monopoly

Yeah, so I didn't like paying over $400 at the beginning of this semester either (for books for only 3 classes!). But what's the alternative?

-Buy used: not a great choice in the long run -- this just drives publishers to churn out "new editions," changing just enough to force students to buy a brand-new edition with different page numbers and a few edits. Most of my books were so expensive because I had to buy new; the professors insisted that it would be too confusing to use the old editions.

-Just find free stuff online: come on... academics got to get paid, y'all. The reason they can charge us $90 for a packet of photocopied articles is because they have to pay the publisher to reprint them. They're not just grabbing stuff off Google. (Well... sometimes I wonder.) And we all know what happens when you don't pay writers for stuff: no new TV for months on end!

Seriously, does anyone have any ideas?

EFollet even affects me at Florida State University; however, there are other bookstores here that carry course books, so it isn't a monopoly, per se.

http://businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2008/01/22/college-textbook-prices-up-186-since-1986-enter-revolution/

$110 for a packet of articles I can probably find online.

$442 even. All but one of them used. These were the cheapest ones I could find and I still spent this much. It's sickening.

I think my total was about $500!