College bookstores

[Rageaholic]

It's bad enough that they sell textbooks at hundreds a piece. It's even worse that they buy them back at cheaper. But when they don't even buy them back and then have to gall to ask you if you want to donate it...



As if I'm not donating enough money on textbooks alone! Greedy bastards.

[Greenday]

I remember the most expensive book I had to get sold for $225 at the school's bookstore. I bought it online for $30. When I went to see how much they were paying to buy them, they were offering $15. Such utter bullshit. School bookstores are all gigantic scams.

[siead_lietrathua]

i bet if some dude managed to upload textbooks, then sell off digital copies for a buck a piece, they'd make their money back ten-over.
(not that i'm advocating illegal downloading etc disclaimer and such)

[Rageaholic]

I remember the most expensive book I had to get sold for $225 at the school's bookstore. I bought it online for $30. When I went to see how much they were paying to buy them, they were offering $15. Such utter bullshit. School bookstores are all gigantic scams.

I gotta remember to just buy the books online or even at Barnes and Noble. I don't know why I even bother with the stupid bookstore. At least the bullshit they pulled today confirms why I shouldn't even bother with them.

i bet if some dude managed to upload textbooks, then sell off digital copies for a buck a piece, they'd make their money back ten-over.
(not that i'm advocating illegal downloading etc disclaimer and such)

It would serve the bookstores right for charging such outrageous prices.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

It would serve the bookstores right for charging such outrageous prices.

Not the bookstores. It's the publishers.

The bookstore doesn't purchase the books and then resell them, they take the books and sell them, and if they don't sell, the books get sent back to the publisher at no cost to the bookstore.

[HYHYBT]

The trouble with buying books online is you either have to order them before classes begin or else try to get through several days without them, and both have their problems. Not being prepared for class is the more obvious one, but I've had at least one class each where it was announced on the first day:

*That we didn't need the book at all and not to bother buying it

*That only a new copy would have the needed software license key, without which we'd have to buy the full version of the software separately

*That only a new copy would have a valid key to the publisher's cloud software, which was necessary for every assignment and not available any other way

*That although the book came with a disc, we wouldn't be needing it and therefore a used copy would work just as well

*That the immediately previous edition of the book would be fine

By previous threads on this topic, others have run into worse problems, like course changing from one expensive book to another after the syllabus was issued.

[Greenday]

Always wait for the first day of classes before buying text books.

[gremcint]

no, go to www.abebooks.com

I've found that amazon lately tends to have about the same prices for the books, I use the website to find out what books I want, I use amazon to get the ISBN, I use abebooks to get the international student edition for about 30 bucks including shipping.

[fireheart17]

Down here I've found that textbooks tend to be (mostly) cheaper. They don't do buybacks, so there's often a secondhand market as well. I tend to do the latter where possible so it works out cheaper.

Occasionally the bookstores will also sell packages that work out to be cheaper overall. For example, my French textbook pack was $180. If you bought each of the components individually (that is, the workbook, CDs and whatnot) it was about $300. The only package I've bought so far in the last 2 years has been my English textbooks.

When I get a chance, I am buying the Maths textbook that was used last year since my other 2 classes didn't have textbooks. (as far as I'm aware, this year, the only topics that require textbooks are the curriculum-based topics, the rest don't need them )

[telecom_goddess]

Boy things have changed since I was in school. Back in 1987 there was no software to buy. There was no Amazon or any other online outlet to buy books from. You had to buy from the bookstore or nothing. There were no online classes I had to physically go to all of them.

Wow.

[BlaqueKatt]

I use the website to find out what books I want, I use amazon to get the ISBN, I use abebooks to get the international student edition for about 30 bucks including shipping.

I'd be very careful about that-publisher's are cracking down on doing that, currently the supreme court is hearing a case where a student was fined $600,000 under copyright law for that.

[Rapscallion]

Interesting. I don't understand from the article how this is a copyright issue. I'd have thought that free trade would have been a priority issue, because the copyright owner still owns the product, but is effectively involved in price fixing.

Rapscallion

[Giggle Goose]

Always wait for the first day of classes before buying text books.

+1. You think I'd learn going to school the second time around for my master's, but nope. I shelled out like $150 bucks for some obscure book on public administration in East Asia. Turned out we only needed ONE article for ONE class discussion, and the professor offered to make every copies for one class.

Fast forward to last month when I tried to sell it back, and the bookstore isn't taking it back. I'm still kicking myself in the ass. I'm thinking I'll try half.com.

[Greenday]

+1. You think I'd learn going to school the second time around for my master's, but nope. I shelled out like $150 bucks for some obscure book on public administration in East Asia. Turned out we only needed ONE article for ONE class discussion, and the professor offered to make every copies for one class.

Fast forward to last month when I tried to sell it back, and the bookstore isn't taking it back. I'm still kicking myself in the ass. I'm thinking I'll try half.com.

The greatest part about the bookstore not buying them back is because it's usually due to a new edition coming out which has all the latest information! (And by latest information I mean some grammar was edited.)

[crashhelmet]

I wonder how bad our student debts would be if we weren't gouged with book prices.

I took a Japanese class at a community College once. It cost me $33 for the class and $200 for the books.