Going through high school, you have been one of the OCD types where everything was organized, you never lost a thing, and you were one of the few that could see the bottom of your bedroom floor on any given day of the week. When you hit college, you unpack and maintain that regimen in the dorm room... At least on your side of the tape that divides the floor space. Your floor looks like a not so clean shade of grey while the other half has taken up the collage of your roommate's clothing. Heading off to the bookstore to pick up books, you hope nothing crosses that line into your territory. That's all you think about until you see the crazy book prices. But you notice a cheaper pile of saran wrapped loose leaf paper with three hole punches next to those hefty priced books and you decide to grab one.
Estimated savings from bookstore: 25%-40% off bounded list price
This is another great way to save money, but only if you are one of those neat folk that I grew around. I did take this route and decided against it because of my track record with loose leaf. By the end of the semester, I had lost three and a half chapters of the material gone over early in the semester and the final chapter took off somewhere after reading day*.
There were plenty of friends of mine that did buy this edition and did great with it. They also made copies of chapters for friends** who didn't have the money to buy a book on their own. At the end of the semester, the copies were in pristine condition and a few were able to sell it back to the bookstore for a small fraction of what they paid.
People who did not sell it back there decided to sell it online*** and had a much better turnover! And if not there, it was great the everyone tried to network as best they could because they found underclassmen that were willing to pay even more because they didn't have to deal with a middleman.
All in all, its not a bad deal going loose leaf so long as you don't buy from the bookstore but buy online or upperclassman. You can save upwards of 50% off the list price of the bound edition and your savings can go to better things, like cleaning supplies and tape reinforcements for dorm floor territory disputes. It can also go to buying the binder to hold all those pages together. Note that you should try to divide the textbook between two or three nice binders or else it won't last a month of the heavy abuse you will be putting it through****.
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*For those who don't know, reading day is a day off from all studies before final exams start to give everyone at least 24 hours of cramming when you haven't done any studying during the year.
**By friends, I mostly mean me. That was a tough time but I only spent a few dollars at the copy machine getting a paper textbook that would cost over a hundred dollars at the bookstore.
***Mostly Amazon.com as they advertise for these editions more often.
****Making copies in the copy machine for your own personal use. *cough*
