Quote:
Originally Posted by staceygab
When the price is low like that it is because the demand is not there close to home. You have to consider that the Bookstore has to pay the people who take back your books, organize them, pack them & ship them. Then if the book is only in demand in BC or Texas the Bookstore has to pay to have it shipped.
That's why the price is so low - it's not that the Bookstore is ripping you off or making a profit off of students - the Bookstore works on a cost recovery basis - no money from your tuition or fee go to cover any bookstore costs - in fact we raise money to support student affairs programs and services.
You're definitely right in that you are better off selling student to student which is why we have the classifies board. You get more money and whoever buys the book will get it cheaper.
Understandably it is [email protected]#$ing frustrating when a $140 book is only worth $5 making it easy to make sweeping statements like the Bookstore is a rip off. You have to remember that there are a lot of other factors to running a business to consider. Trust me... no one over here is getting rich. |
Bullshit. They buy the book back for pennies, and then sell it the next day at 500% markup. Buy it back for $3.80, resell at $65. that kind of profit margin is disgusting. I'd rather burn my book in front of them than take that insulting pocket change from them.
Whats really ****ing frustrating is that the textbook publishing industry goes out of its way to prevent books being made available as ebooks or .pdf files for a fraction of the price. our illustrious student-puppet-regime also is failing to address this big obvious question. were books available this way, industry justifications for outrageous prices (low/niche demand, minimum print runs, out of print, new edition...) would be irrelevent and books could cost reasonable prices just like anything at the bookstore.
You want to do a real buyback? Go to the bookstore or one of those temp stores they set up for first year students, bring your books and wait for someone to try and buy what you have from the register. go up and hawk your wares in front of the salesperson for a 50% discounted rate. I do this every year, it works, and I love to see the confused and angry looks on their faces when I do it. what are they gonna do, call the cops? trust me, you'll offload your cargo quickly, profitably and make sure this glorified pyramid scheme called University doesn't milk an additional dime from you.
As students, we need to demand that our profs stop pushing pointless reading materials on us. Most of my classes I never buy books but instead pirate them where available. I have never had a problem with assignments or final exams. I also make a point of anonymously writing to my profs when I feel their reading choices are self-serving or pointless, or my required purchase of them took money away from my very limited budget for actual necessities such as food, electricity, property taxes or my mortgage. Other students need to get militant on this issue (both by demanding ebook texts from publishers, respectful buyback prices and more responsible textbook choices from profs) or else all your gonna do is complain and your kids will get triple-****ed from the trend by the time it comes their turn to feed the Beast.
