Buyback bumfuckery

[Shalom]

One of the services provided by the Student Union at Brooklyn College (CUNY) was matching-up book buyers and book sellers. This was in 1990, so no interwebz as of yet; it was all done via great huge piles of index cards in looseleaf binders. See, you could buy a book for $75 at the bookstore, that you could sell back for about $16, that the bookstore would then turn around and sell for $49. Made out like bandits, they did. So the students started selling them to each other. I wound up selling my biology textbook for about $20 more than I'd've gotten for it in the bookstore, which was just about $20 less than the other kid would've paid in the bookstore. Both of us made out, nobody lost but the bookstore.

(They weren't $380 yet, thank $DEITY: most I ever paid for a textbook was $94 for Goodman & Gilman. That lists for $170 now.)

You had to be careful of what you got though. My brother once got a used book in which some maniac who owned it previously had highlighted every other line of every paragraph. It was like trying to read a watermelon; he said it gave him a headache even looking at it.

Speaking of accounting, back when I was in college I was ranting about the bookstore to my father, who is an accountant. He said they used to pull this on them every year... Tunick & Saxe's Principles of Accounting was a required text, and you could never either buy it used or sell it back because a new one came out each year, and Dean Tunick and Professor Saxe wouldn't let you use the old ones in their classes...

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I know the answer to this is probably "because that would make too much sense"

But why didn't your superiors just make new signs or allow you to modify the existing signs to specify TEXTBOOKS only instead of just books?

[chainedbarista]

kristev, i'm thinking that the books' condition speaks for themselves; anyone who mistreats books like that should be shot.

seriously, though, a 'buy all books' policy is a bad idea, which lupo has already explained in detail.

$93? i would love to get that much back; i've bought books that cost in the $200 range (had to buy new because it was the first semester they used it), however, i didn't get squat back for it because they decided not to use it again.

[Merriweather]

One of the services provided by the Student Union at Brooklyn College (CUNY) was matching-up book buyers and book sellers. This was in 1990, so no interwebz as of yet; it was all done via great huge piles of index cards in looseleaf binders. See, you could buy a book for $75 at the bookstore, that you could sell back for about $16, that the bookstore would then turn around and sell for $49. Made out like bandits, they did. So the students started selling them to each other. I wound up selling my biology textbook for about $20 more than I'd've gotten for it in the bookstore, which was just about $20 less than the other kid would've paid in the bookstore. Both of us made out, nobody lost but the bookstore.

I was in college pre-internet as well, we just had one enormous bulletin board up in a central location, with everyone posting "I have this" lists and "I need that" lists, with lots of little phone number tags at the bottom of your index card. Took a while to find anything, but was definitely worth it compared to the bookstore.

[Exaspera]

I hate when the book companies revise the editions just about every year, and then change maybe 2 pages of it.

[jnd4rusty]

Hah, I wish there was a place that would buy my textbooks..I have two accounting books, one biology and one organization and management book that I can't unload! I have even tried textbooks.com and they won't take them. It is frustrating because I live in a small apartment and really don't have the room for extra stuff.

[Magpie]

They don't even change the content much - change around the questions at the end of each chapter, and you've guaranteed that almost everyone will buy your new book, even if they have someone to buy it from.

If people are so upset about what your store is giving you, don't they have a used textbook store that they can go to? The bookstore at my university doesn't even do buybacks, because no one would go there.

[Mr.Customer]

Textbook costs are a total scam by the companies and I am suprized the universities allow it, other then they must get a chunk of that too. Issuing new editions of math and science books for first and second year students in particular is simply fraudulent imo, the subject material simply doesn't change enough to warrent needing new books (seriously there are no significant scientific discoveries that can go into those textbooks that they would need replacing) New additions being made simply to drive up the price and force old editions off the market to ensure new books are purchased is a scam.

If they rewrote the Harry Potter books to "update them", I doubt they would sell very well at all.

[RedRoseSpiral]

Myers Psychology in Modules, by chance? I know they bring those out every couple of years...gets annoying! What some students started doing is just buying the Portal Access instead of the book because using the online portal still gives you an e-copy of the book that you have access to for either six or twelve months depending on which Psych Portal you buy.

Not Myer's book. It's Weiten's Briefer Version Seventh Edition Psychology Themes & Variations. This book evidently gets rewritten every 2-3 years and as far as I know there isn't an online version. I'm just glad I found a copy of it for $10 on amazon.

[Marmalady]

Poor Lupo, you do get them don't you? I just wonder what they were actually using the books for - can't have been for reading...
Is your poor thumb better now?

[Bronzebow]

I hate when the book companies revise the editions just about every year, and then change maybe 2 pages of it.

I used to buy my books online from Amazon. It was usually pretty easy to find the exact version needed for almost half the price of the campus bookstore, and the buyback price was usually only slightly less than what I'd paid for it. There were times I even managed to make a profit, though I probably would have made more if I sold them back online. I was just too lazy, heh.

For one of the math classes, I misread the version of what I'd purchased. Ended up getting some version of the math book that was a decade out of print instead of version, like, 12 used for that class. I completely freaked out until I borrowed the current version and did a compare. The pages lined up almost perfectly. Occasionally, whole paragraphs were cut-and-pasted down a section or two. Literally, word for word, the whole paragraph was shifted! Even the problems at the back of the chapters were identical.

The one big difference was that the even numbered problems had their answers supplied instead of the odd numbered in the current version. So when the teacher assigned the even numbered for our graded homework, my friends and I had a way of verifying our answers....

[Sliceanddice]

Hah, I wish there was a place that would buy my textbooks..I have two accounting books, one biology and one organization and management book that I can't unload! I have even tried textbooks.com and they won't take them. It is frustrating because I live in a small apartment and really don't have the room for extra stuff.

did you try amazon?

[Cookie]

The one big difference was that the even numbered problems had their answers supplied instead of the odd numbered in the current version. So when the teacher assigned the even numbered for our graded homework, my friends and I had a way of verifying our answers....

Mwahahaha! Awesome!

[trailerparkmedic]

I'm mad at my college right now because of textbooks. Apparently they have some deal with the textbook publishers where old editions are used for a few years after the new ones come out. The bookstore still sells the books for near sticker price, it becomes pretty difficult to find used ones online, you can't rent it, and you only get pennies when you try to sell the book to the bookstore or online. It happened for all 4 of my classes this semester! Thankfully I can rent the book for my summer class and then I'm off to a different college where my books will just be obscenely expensive instead of pretty expensive and impossible to sell.

[paper_wastage]

I'm mad at my college right now because of textbooks. Apparently they have some deal with the textbook publishers where old editions are used for a few years after the new ones come out. The bookstore still sells the books for near sticker price, it becomes pretty difficult to find used ones online, you can't rent it, and you only get pennies when you try to sell the book to the bookstore or online. It happened for all 4 of my classes this semester! Thankfully I can rent the book for my summer class and then I'm off to a different college where my books will just be obscenely expensive instead of pretty expensive and impossible to sell.

I almost got away with buying no books this semester (friend's books or don't need books at all)... but my AI class had a book that had a new edition(doesn't seem to be a edition-gouging book, so i bought it)
http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Int...3712799&sr=8-1

bought it for $105 new ... now it's $95 new... not bad for depreciation though...

i usually sell it on ebay or amazon marketpalce... B&N never really offers a good buyback price...