I registered for a class at the local community college for this fall, and found that the class textbook was available on Amazon.com at half of what the college bookstore wanted. The college bookstore, iirc, is actually run by Barnes and Noble, but I don’t know whether they just pay flat rent to the school for the storefront on campus, or whether or not the school gets a cut of every sale. I bought the book on amazon, eschewing the campus bookstore.
Do you think this was impolite? I know that state schools are struggling nowadays with funding troubles, and was wondering if I am seriously contributing to the problem. Now, I seriously doubt that there is anything in the student handbook that states that eschewing the campus bookstore for a competitor constitutes a conduct violation, and even if it did, I might be able to convince a judge to either toss it out or give me a cash settlement for an unfair disciplinary practice.
In America as long as you aren’t stealing the textbook from someone else or scamming the book seller, any method of acquiring the textbook is more of less your business only. There’s no etiquette involved.
I don’t think your going to find much debate on whether or not your actions were ok. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that 100% of responses will be that what you did was A-OK.
No, absolutely it’s not impolite. In fact, colleges are now supposed to provide you with ISBNs of all required textbooks, so that you can shop around.
The only way it could be “impolite” is if you waited so long to order your book(s) that you didn’t get it until well after the class started and couldn’t do the assigned reading, homework, etc.
Anecdote – I went to two different colleges for my undergrad. The first was a big state school, with a half dozen large bookstores right off campus. Despite the competition, prices were high and resale value was about the cost of a six-pack. The second school was a small private school with a single bookstore on campus. I’m not sure who ran it, but while the prices there were still ludicrously high, they generally gave you 75% of that back if you sold it back to them at the end of the semester. My enterprising young self bought the books from Amazon like I was in the habit of doing, then sold them back to the bookstore at a profit. And even then I didn’t feel particularly skeezy.
Doing it for your own personal book that you used at that same college doesn’t seems fine to me. If you bought books by the crate and made a business out of it, it would probably cross the line but maybe not even then. The bookstore is still making a profit.
As for the OP, it’s not the least bit wrong, sketchy or impolite.
Here is my own anecdote. In the mid-80’s, in those dark days before the web, three enterprising students, one of whom was an acquaintance of mine had a very bright idea. They bought books directly from the publisher for classes like first year calculus and chemistry and sold them directly to students well below the book store price. They also bettered the price for buying and selling used versions of those books. The dickheads who ran the campus bookstore were furious. They actually tried to make it so that the students weren’t allowed to advertise on campus either with fliers or in the student newspaper. Campus bookstores, for the most part, are a screwjob. If I were a student now, you better believe I would get my books at Amazon.
Not only is it not “impolite”, but there is a working economy of competitive textbook stores at my old school.
Speaking as a former (and current very part-time) university instructor: the university is not in the business to sell books. It’s not their business model, or at least it should not be.
In my college days, I simply went to the school library, checked out an earlier edition of the textbook, and kept it until class was over. Since there was usually little difference between the current edition and recent earlier editions, there was no problem with keeping up with the rest of the class, and the only cost was the overdue fines which were much, much cheaper than buying the book either new or used.
Just about every instructor I had was thoroughly disgusted with the way the textbook publishers and bookstores ripped off the students.
Back 20 or 30 years ago there was a market in ripped off textbooks, printed in Taiwan at the time, which you could identify by the blurry covers. I don’t know if they still exist, but buying one of those would be improper. Buying something from Amazon where the publisher gets credit (or used, which is just the same as buying used from the college bookstore) is perfectly ok. It is not like the managers of the college bookstore cannot see the Amazon price and compete against that price if they wish to. The delay in getting the book, versus the ability to get it immediately at the college bookstore, is the only issue I can see. Colleges may get some kickback from the bookstore, but it is tiny.
Until Amazon came around campus bookstores had a near monopoly. They still have the great advantage of knowing which books are going to be used and the size of the market. If they can’t make money given that, they need to revise their business plan.
Moved to IMHO from Great Debates. And I agree with the posters who said this is not a politeness issue. College textbooks can be exorbitantly pricey and using resources like Half.com and Amazon and others is a necessity for a lot of students. You shouldn’t hesitate to avail yourself of those.
You also kept the book from other people, not in the class, who might have wanted to reference it. If I were the librarian, I’d institute fines that escalated exponentially with time overdue to prevent this rather obnoxious behavior.