Book buyback programs take advantage of naive students.

The BBQ Pit
21

I’ve heard that bookstore vary wildly in their policies, but at the store where I work, we have a couple of weeks, right before and after finals, where we pay half the new price for books that will be used again.

We even pay half the new price for used books. If a new book sells for $60 and you bought a used copy for $45, you’ll still get $30. If a book isn’t being used the next semester, we’ll buy it for whatever a wholesaler would be willing to pay us for it. This is why students from students from other colleges in Austin sell their books to us, when we don’t even carry their books.

Whenever customers come in to sell books, we tell them about this policy, making it clear they can get more money if they wait. This never stops anyone selling their books early from bitching “I paid X amount for that and you’re offering me Y!” I dearly wish we were allowed to say “Hey, buddy, it’s not our fault you dropped the class/are desperate for cash/need beer money.”

22

I’ve always wondered how this worked, because several times I’ve had a professor who gave the assignment and then when we got home, it didn’t make sense because the pg numbers would be in the middle of chaptres or stories or whatever. So we’d ask and he’d say “OH! You have the 7th edition, I’m still using the 6th edition. Let me see…” IOW, there have been times when my prof didn’t even know we had/“needed” the new edition of a book.

23

Exactly what I was thinking. Grab a domain, get a cheapie hosting account, (throw out a Paypal/Amazon honors button for support, or sell really cheap – $10 for 1000 displays – banner ads to local student-friendly businesses like pizza joints, etc.) and install a free BB system and let people work out their own sales/trades. Have two separate areas to the forum – the sales forum and the trade forum.

Heck, you could probably sell access to the site via memberships at $5 a semester, that would almost definitely cover the costs and it’d still be low enough that people would be willing to give it a try if they could barter their books or buy and sell them at a fair price without anyone getting rich off of the transaction.

If I had the time, I might do this myself. The start-up investment could be less than $100 if done right.

Any students who might want to take this model and run with it, improve it, make it something useful, please, go for it.

Tracey, who still has some of her college textbooks after twenty years because she couldn’t sell the #*&$^(! things and knows your pain.

24

Wow! I’ve got bookcases full of books. I guess if I take them back to B&N, I get 1/2 or 3/4 or their value?

Having been on both sides, college bookstores love used books (increased profit margin) and the publishers hate them (they don’t get paid on used books). It’s a viscious circle–if the bookstores didn’t buy back books, publishers wouldn’t put out new editions so often; it’s the same with tear-out worksheet pages, software, CDs, etc.

Publishers try to maximize their profits, as do bookstores. Students get caught in the middle. Rise up. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

25

I worked for a time at Texas Book Company. I’m not sure if the prices at the various college book stores are based on what classes are being offered locally - we bought the used books from the stores that bought them from the students, and resold them to book stores everywhere - the warehouse was like a vast library, and we got hundreds, probably thousands, every day. A lot of them were teachers editions, the kind that book publishers give away to the teachers hoping they will use them in a class. We would cut out the keys and put ‘Inspected and approved for Resale’ stickers over the ‘Complimentary edition, not for resale’ parts.

26

Try selling them independently. Get wind of who’s taking what classes next semester, or put ads up around campus, and sell them for less than retail, but more than what the bookstore would give you.

This might be difficult in a large undergrad institution. It works GREAT in grad school or professional school, where there tend to be fewer students.

27

UVic buys for 50% and sells for 75%… pretty reasonable…

Don’t get me started on those EDITIONS though. Imagine how happy I was when I started TA-ing and I could borrow my texts from the math office!

28

By the way, I had great success selling my textbooks online at Half.com compared to the bookstore, you might want to try that.

29

I have learned, at least in my field (biochemistry/organic chemistry) that what you can’t find in an older (even SEVERAL years old) edition, you can find on the web. Heck, if you need it at ALL, its likely out there on the web, or the book (or one like it) is in the library, or on reserve, or your housemate has it, etc. I no longer buy textbooks, primarily because, like so many students, I don’t use them. Very few profs test you on anything OUTSIDE of lecture material, so if they didn’t say it in class, it isn’t on the test. Its cheaper to photocopy problem questions out of a book than it is to buy the book.

I have a copy of Stryer’s biochem textbook, which was INSISTED upon 3 years ago by the biochem department. Now they ALL use Lehninger, which I refused to buy, because I can’t sell Stryer. I am NOT going to have two introductory biochem books on my bookshelf, especially since I don’t ever actually plan on doing biochem as a living (I consider myself to be an organic chemist). I have yet to have a class, that, despite the profs comments, did NOT have the material in Stryer. And like I said, I’m more likely to find something on the web anyways. Every univeristy covers the EXACT same material in its undergraduate class. 5 seconds on Google will find you the powerpoint and assignment/homepages of a dozen or more courses all explaining what you need to know to more than your satisfaction.

I used to spend 3-500$ on textbooks per semester. In the past three semesters COMBINED, I’ve maybe spent about 2-300$. And the few that I have bought, were ones I knew Id probably want to keep, or for the odd course where the prof was so terrible that I started using the text more than once a semester.

Works for me. YMMV.

30

With all the respect due college students and the difficulty of the burdensome costs of higher education, this particular problem doesn’t exactly break my heart.

College students pay thousands upon thousands per semester to go to school, and yet the one tangible thing they get from courses–their textbooks, all annotated and highlighted–they’re eager to sell, and to get top dollar for.

If you’ve taken a college course correctly, that is, your textbooks will be all marked up, and will contain a record of your own thoughts, reactions, responses to the stuff you’re paying all this money to learn about. In reality, I know, you barely read the textbooks and don’t have a clue as to how to annotate them, largely because you’re thinking that maybe if you leave them in pristine condition, they might be worth a few extra dollars upon resale, so you forego actually engaging with the texts, and forego some of the benefit of the course you’re paying all this money for. Does this seem a sensible policy to you? It sure doesn’t to me.

I used to be an extreme example, btw, of this sort of short-sighted college student myself. I learned only a few things in high school, and the one lesson drummed into my head the most repetitively was “The textbook doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the Board of Education, so DON"T EVEN THINK [actually they could have stopped right here] about marking it up,” a lesson I carried with me through my first few years of college. Mind you, I had no idea about selling the textbooks, I was merely thinking about preserving them, little understanding that in the future I would dearly love to have my reading notes available to me, even (yes!) in subjects I thought I would never have use for in my life.

So don’t take this wrong–I realize that books are expensive, and that every penny counts in a student’s budget. But it’s shortsighted to throw away one of the few tangible and useful things you get out of taking courses, and it’s kind of silly to argue that if you choose to, you should at least be getting x dollars instead of y.

Mnemosyne–I’m not a chemist, but you’ll be amazed at the changes you’ll go through in your career. If there’s even a chance that a bio-chemistry text could come in handy someday, why knock yourself out to divest yourself of your annotated text?

31

Uh this is not a scam…its typical resale markup for most businesses. They still have to pay rent, employees, electricity, etc out of this amount. Keeping the doors of a business open costs money.

32

My husband teaches at our local university and makes an effort to find low-cost texts to use for his classes. He even loans out the teacher’s editions to students who are in a financial pinch. (He remembers all-too-clearly what it was like to be a cash-strapped college student.)

The last few sememsters, he actually used a paperback which cost less than $20.

33

Not true at all. Maybe in a bio class or something like that, but I have rarely had any professors after freshman year follow the books at all. The text books are mainly references. If I was to try to flip thru the books I have to follow along with the professor I would either a) fall behind on the lecture from all the page turning or b) do worse on exams because I am not doing the calculations the way the prof wants them done.

You would be amazed at the difference between how a EE book says to do something and how a professor says to do it.

34

But it doesn’t end there, does it? Let’s say I sell back my American Gov and Politics Book. Never been used. I bought it for $120 and they buy it back for say, $25. Now, that means they only made about $100 profit and they have bills to pay so it’s reasonable—except they are going ot turn around and sell that book for $100. I know they are, because that’s how much the used editions of the book would have cost me if there were any copies left. That $100 is pure profit, so in reality, they turn a profit of $200—and they do this to every single student who buys a book, all 2000 of them. (I go to small school.) That is a scam, as far as i’m concerned. But it doesn’t matter to me, because like I said before, I keep my books for future reference.

35

I think selling the textbooks online are the best way to go, IMO. Although it doesn’t quite work it you’re trying to sell older editions. Course there’s always E-bay too, but who bids on older textbooks?

36

Wow, this thread brings back memories. I remember back in college how expensive textbooks were. I didn’t worry about marking up my books; I did whatever I had to do to get through the exams. I wish I’d kept my accounting books,they’d come in handy now.

37

Well its obvious you didn’t major in business, accounting , or math…

$100 is not PURE PROFIT!! IF thats what you believe, you have zero comprehension of how a business operates.

A a lease still needs to be paid next semester, employees still need to be paid next semester, inventory still needs to be purchased next semester. The $100 they get again next semester for the book they paid $25 dollars for AGAIN next semester. If you want to complain, yell at the teachers who ask you to buy $125 books and then not use them.

38

I don’t know if they still do this, but my university operated much like high school as far as textbooks are concerned. The school owned the books, loaned them out to students at the beginning of the semester, and you had to return them at the end, no charge. If you wanted to keep the books for future reference, you could, but you would then have to buy them - price varied by the condition of the book. Seemed like a good system, particularly when I heard horror stories (much like the ones in this thread) from my friends at other universities. Go ASU!! (Appalachian State U, not Arizona :smiley: )

39

I have been a textbook buyer and a publisher’s rep, so maybe I can clear some things up. Let’s say that Professor Asshat requires a $100 book. New, that book will cost the bookstore between $65-70. So, they’re making $30-35 on that. Knowing that they can sell it for $75 next semester as a used book, they’re willing to give you something back to increase their profit margin in the future. So, since they gave you 40 bucks for the book, they’re still only netting somewhere around 30–35 this time around. Hopefully, they get to sell it one or two more times.

Meanwhile, the publisher sees that there is a huge market for used books, which they not only do not get paid for, but also cuts into the number of books they can sell. So, in order to maximize their profits, they find many ways to keep students buying new books.

The way to break the cycle is to stop selling your books back and stop buying used books. If an edition can be sold as new long enough to be profitable, the publishers will only update as necessary for informational value rather than profit and prices will go down. But as long as they’re fighting the used book market, they have to keep prices high and new editions rolling out to stay in business.

40

My undergrad university in Sydney, Australia ran a second-hand bookstore where you could sell your books on consignment. You determined the price that you wanted for the book, and the store took a 10 or 20% cut (i can’t remember) when it was sold.

The great thing about this system is that you can ask whatever price you think you can get for the book, and it also gives you an incentive to keep it in good condition. The downside, of course, is that you don’t get your money until the book is sold.