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Opinion

College bookstores all about the Benjamins

Jim McCormick
Opinion Columnist

One particularly annoying aspect of college life with which most students are familiar is the quest for affordable textbooks. While this Holy Grail may or may not exist, the fact is that it can't be found at any brick-and-mortar college textbook store.

In fact, if one is looking to be treated fairly as a customer, college bookstores are the last places to look. While they tout the savings of buying used textbooks, I usually find that it's generally worth the extra $20 to get a copy without highlighting and margin notes about the various cute people in freshman English. That, and it ensures the publisher and the writer get their fair cut of the sale.

The way I see it, the writers and publishers are only coming out with new editions that change very little from one version to the next to stay solvent, as they are being undercut by used book sales, which are promoted by the bookstores, as there is more profit in reselling a book bought from one student for a paltry $20 to another gullible person for $100 than there is in buying a book from the publishing company and charging the cover price. 

In addition, many bookstores have a double standard on returns. If I were to buy a novel for a literature class at the beginning of the year, and then drop it within 30 days of buying the book, I might not be able to get a refund, even if I had never even cracked the spine. This is because the receipt marks the book clearly as a textbook, and the bookstore lists a last day to return textbooks for a refund. After that date, I'd have to eat the price of the book, because it is incredibly unlikely that the bookstore will buy that book back at the end of the semester.

I'm not saying college bookstores shouldn't be allowed to make money. However, the problem is not the fact that there is a profit margin for these businesses, but the way they go about making that money. Instead of talking to the publishers about listing a reasonable price on the cover, the bookstores instead chose to rip off college students who usually can barely afford to eat.

Given the predatory actions of campus bookstores, what is a student to do? If you're short on cash, scouring the Internet for your textbooks is a good idea. You're far more likely to get a fair deal for a book when you buy it directly from another student, or even through a used bookseller, than through college bookstores. If you do have the money, you can go to the college bookstores, buy a new copy of the textbook, and then not sell it back. After all, the bookstore might not make any money on new textbook sales, as they have to sell new books at the listed cover price. If you need the money, you can always sell it to another student directly. McCormick, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, can be reached at thephotoman@gmail.com.
 

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