I have never sold back any books of mine in all my time in school. I like to have all my text books for reference down the road (EE). I almost decided to sell one back yesterday till I got slapped in teh face by what they were offering for the book.
I paid almost $140 for a book on CMOS design in January. This book is the latest and greatest edition, in fact my class was the first to use the thing since it came out. I made it thru the entire quarter without even opening the book. The reciept is still in the front cover. The binding on the book still creaks and crack when you open it. Thats how fresh this thing is.
So anyway, I am leaving school yesterday after taking my finals and I see the book buy back counter on my way out. I thought to myself “Ya know. This book was REALLY expensive and I don’t plan on taking any CMOS layout courses in the future so what the hell, Ill sell the thing back and make back 70-80 dollars at least”
So I bring the book to the counter and said “Here ya go! Brand new book. Brand new edition. Never been opened except to put the reciept in. How much will I get for this pristine engineering book?”
So the guy behind the counter starts flipping thru his price guide and you know what they wanted to give me for this book? This book I paid $140 for less than 13 weeks ago?
This douchebag tried to give me $35 dollars for it.
Yeah.
$35.
For a $140 dollar book.
I saw in the book what the resale price was going to be on the book.
$104 dollars. Thats a $70 fucking profit.
These pieces of shit are buying these books from students who may be desperate for money, or need money for new books and they KNOW they can rob them like that. It is fucked up. Luckily I am a working professional and didn’t need the money for the book. I quickly took it off the counter in disgust and left. I feel sorry for kids who are desperate for cash or other people who have to pinch pennies to get thru school.
Fuck these dip shits. Anyone out there that wants to sell their books should put them on a bulliten board and save someone else $20-50 bucks while making them selves and extra $50 more than these fucking blood sucking vampires would give them for them.
Yep. Student textbook sales in general are a scam.
At least they offered you something for it. I had to buy a business law book for an 8 week summer class once. It was brand spanking new, and the price showed it ($125). Well, 8 weeks and almost no use later, I went back to resell it.
“Sorry. That class isn’t using that book anymore so we aren’t buying any back”.
Sometimes, if you keep your eyes open, you’ll notice that the class that the book is for isn’t offered during the next semester. However, it is offered the semester after that. So, if you hold onto your book for a semester you can sell it back for more than you would get selling it back right away.
Sometimes I swear colleges are designed for the sole purpose of confusing and frustrating the living hell out of you, just to see how you cope. Like a giant psychology experiment or something.
My books cost $500 this semester. based on past experience, if I tried to sell them back, I’d be lucky to get $100—it would probably be closer to 75.
I just elect to keep my books too.
It is a scam. You mentioned the ‘latest and greatest edition.’ I was friendly with the manager of my small-town college bookstore and heard all kinds of stories about this crap – the publishers put out a new version every 2-3 years max explicitly to fleece more money out of kids by keeping them buying new editions instead of letting used copies circulate. It’s a racket.
If you keep your books (especially within your major), there’s a good chance you’ll find some of them to be useful references in courses you take later on.
I know it would never happen but with the tuition being as high as it is at my school ($195 p/qh) they should keep 10-15 books that a student can check out for the quarter. I pay almost 1K for a 5 hr class. This is undergrad tuitoin mind you.
There should really be some type of investigation into this shit. The price of the books is fucking insane. In 4 years of EE I probably have about 5 grand worth of books on my shelf. I understand alot of effort goes into making these books, but $150+ for a textbook is fucking crazy. Especially when you can count on getting 20-30 bucks for it after the semester.
As a poli sci, philosophy student I’m not exposed to such dramatic price differences. However, it still happens to me. Most notably with the stupid development books that I’m forced to buy. It’s all a scam if you ask me. The great collusion between profs and the campus bookstore.
Yeah, the bookstore at my school has an entire list of things that will reduce the buyback value of our books… pen markings, highlighting, bent covers, doodling, etc. Which I wouldn’t be pissed about, except that they sell all the used books back at exactly the same price, markings or not. And all of the used books sell, so it’s not like they’re worried that a highlighted one won’t move. They’re just looking for excuses to take more money.
The book publishers essentially spam profs with their books, in the hopes that the book will get used. That’s where profs and TAs usually get their copies, from the absurd amounts of text books they have lying around. Overheads and the like are also included if appropriate in the speil to get the book used.
When I TA’d for general psych I sold my complementary copy of the book to the bookstore in an effort to make some pure profit on one of the books. I think I’m going to do it again with the book for the stats course that I’m TAing for. The damn thing is a true rip-off. A CD is included in it to jack the price up even higher while destroying most of its resale value.
Even better is when the book is written by your professor. Not only are you paying too much for the book and tuition, but the professor gets extra royalties.
True, but not nearly as much as the publisher and the bookstore.
I write college textbooks for a living. I’m rather low on the totem pole atm, so I don’t have the exact numbers, but the people I work with once told me they get a couple of bucks per sale on a book that retails for $100.00. They happen to sell several hundred thousand copies a year, so it works out for them - but that professor who wrote “Advanced Basketweaving in pre-Etruscan Homosexual Society” probably only sells a few hundred copies a year… you can work out just how rich he’s getting.
If you are a disciplined studier…my roommate and I had the same major, and we went in on buying the books for the joint courses. It worked out well: I’m one of those annoying people who read ahead, she was a ‘small hours the night before the test’ studier. I photocopied some pages as I went along, charts and such.
At the end of each term we would haul the texts to the used book place – if neither of us wanted the book, we sold it and split the money, otherwise the one who wanted it paid the other half the going rate.
And in the case of us both wanting a copy, we just stood there and made an offer to the ones standing in line of $10 over what the bookstore was offering.
Which also is a great way of cutting costs in advance, when you know what your courses will be second semester and you know the books will be the same. If you ask the prof, they will tell you – say you’re so eager to start on the course you can’t wait. They love that.
Ahh, that’s why I’ve never bothered selling my books back (besides the fact I want to keep most of them anyway).
I’m in a small school (~4000 students or so), and I have a good network with fellow Computer Science and fellow Humanities majors. I sold my Computer Science 2 book to Katie for $40 ($70 new, no used copies and I would’ve gotten about $10 if I sold it to the bookstore). Ravin sold me his Comparative Programming Languages book for $50 ($130 new at the bookstore, $90/used, and he would’ve gotten paid around $20 for it). I’ve even loaned books before; they give me $10 at the beginning of the semester, and when they return it in one piece, they give me another $10.
I never, never understood this, as it seems to be a universal phenomenon. First of all, why aren’t there more alternative sources for textbooks popping up around campuses, either for a new, used or both market? Somehow one would think the vast number of consumers looking for low cost alternatives could somehow band together and have a significant impact on pricing.
Secondly, at my university there was indeed an alternative textbook sale event put on by one of the local fraternities. Every year there were huge lines to get in and such. But, sadly, its existence didn’t seem to make a dent. The prices weren’t all that much better than the evil bookstore, and the selection of course wasn’t complete.
Thirdly, what exactly is the impetus for professors to change their textbooks frequently? It can’t be simply that they are bombarded with marketing from the textbook companies, can it? I mean, surely there are hundreds of profs out there who have found a perfectly servicable book for their basic, 101-type courses, and are perfectly happy to use it. Why doesn’t this seem to be an overriding influence on the price of books?
This textbook scam business has always struck me as un-fucking-believable.
