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Thread: The Chat Thread

  1. #69431
    Always the Bridesmaid... bulmabriefs144's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kaglover1 View Post
    The school do reuse the same books for the next year, so better to buy cheap because if they do return you can resell it. But for example you bought it at an expensive price, and you figured out that they do not use them anymore. Waste of cash
    Don't even buy used from the school. You're paying thousands of dollars to learn, right? So, besides staffing teachers, are they really upholding their end of the bargain? No, so why are you now giving them MORE money, and selling at a loss (forget half, often not even 10%)?

    The reasons books cost so much are many:


    • Sheer number - Compared to high school, a semester of college uses a lot more books. You'll have longer reading assignments and many courses will assign readings from more than one book.
    • Copyright - The publishers of large anthologies of recent writings need to pay copyright fees to every author in the book. A poetry anthology for a literature class, for example, may involve clearing hundreds of copyrights.
    • Highly specialized material - Many college textbooks are highly specialized and the material is unavailable in any other book. The low volume of published books and the lack of market competition drive publishers to jack up prices.
    • Online companions - Many textbooks are complemented by online resources. The subscription fee is built in to the cost of the book.
    • Supplies - For art, lab and science classes, the estimated cost of books often includes supplies, lab necessities and calculators
    • Lack of used textbooks - Publishers make no money when too many used books are in circulation. As a consequence, they will often release new editions every few years in order to make the used books obsolete.
    • Review and desk copies - Book publishers make money only when college professors adopt their books. This often means that they send free review copies to potential instructors. The cost of this practice is offset by the high price students pay for books.
    • Faculty control - In high school, the choice of books if often decided by a department or committee. Price and negotiations with publishers may be part of this process. In college, individual faculty members usually have complete control over their choice of books. Not all professors are sensitive to cost, and some will even assign expensive books they authored themselves (sometimes collecting royalties in the process).
    Mkay, so if you had Paul Tillich teaching your theology course, you'd have Writings on Religion assigned to you at like $126.00 hardcover. Or you could amazon it, and instead get The Courage To Be and Dynamics of Faith (pretty much the sum of them) in paperback, each for $10. See the problem? And of course, this $125 book might be a 7th edition too.

    Also, Paul Tillich is probably dead now. So you can get his books easy, and he won't care what you read.

    Also, yea, Tesi is right.

    A "good" quality book that's been used 12 times will sell at the same price as another "good" quality book that's been used just once.
    The obnoxious thing being when you sell it back they give you wholesale price, and then proceed to sell it as "good." It apparently wasn't "good" enough to give you a decent portion back, but somehow it's good enough to sell at 3/4-1/2 the new price?

  2. #69432
    butts FailFTW's Avatar
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    Bulma have you ever went to college?
    Butts.

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  3. #69433
    We're in a heap o'trouble Tesiqurasa's Avatar
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    They're basically charging you for being lazy. They've got overhead when it comes to repacking, shipping, relabeling, and restocking the sold-back books. There's definitely some profit there, but blaming them for reselling used books like that is pretty pointless. The publishing companies are mostly to blame, because like Bulma said, they're the ones reprinting more or less the same books with different edition numbers. The uni. bookstores aren't really making a massive amount of profit.
    Every book store does this. If you take a mediocre book to a local used bookstore, you're going to get about 10% of its "value" back. They've got the store, they've got the shelf space, they're fronting the money ahead of time. Everyone does it; that's just the price we pay for saving time.

    If you take care of all that overhead yourself (sell it yourself online or in person), you can get significantly more. It's going to take more time and effort, but you get more back.


    Spoiler!



  4. #69434
    Luck kaglover1's Avatar
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    Ok wait Bulma, the school sells new books and the students then buy them. The next school year the students take their textbooks (that they bought) and sell them to other students who need them

  5. #69435
    Always the Bridesmaid... bulmabriefs144's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tesiqurasa View Post
    They're basically charging you for being lazy. They've got overhead when it comes to repacking, shipping, relabeling, and restocking the sold-back books. There's definitely some profit there, but blaming them for reselling used books like that is pretty pointless. The publishing companies are mostly to blame, because like Bulma said, they're the ones reprinting more or less the same books with different edition numbers. The uni. bookstores aren't really making a massive amount of profit.
    Every book store does this. If you take a mediocre book to a local used bookstore, you're going to get about 10% of its "value" back. They've got the store, they've got the shelf space, they're fronting the money ahead of time. Everyone does it; that's just the price we pay for saving time.

    If you take care of all that overhead yourself (sell it yourself online or in person), you can get significantly more. It's going to take more time and effort, but you get more back.

    Fail to answer your question, yea I have. Ferrum, which was pretty reasonable, since it was a small school.

    10% is fine with me. I wouldn't expect to get 1/2 price (if I bought the thing new, our store at Ferrum would give 1/2 price if it was like new and full price if I decided to ditch the class within a certain time frame), but if each book used was $120 and I have 10 books, damn straight I should at the very least get the equivalent of one book worth back. Alot of years this was close, but one year it was far from the case instead giving me pennies on the dollar and not taking one book for "water damage." I would have gotten about $15 or so for about $750 or so of books. "**** this and **** you," I said more or less, and walked out claiming not even that. I kept those books until home, and asked my dad to gimme 5-10% for them (he's a biblioholic, he said just this once). So, yea, after that year, I ordered from amazon at discount. Then I discovered I couldn't resell them since there was no code number from the store.

  6. #69436
    We're in a heap o'trouble Tesiqurasa's Avatar
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    or you could just resell through other sources?


    Spoiler!



  7. #69437
    Always the Bridesmaid... bulmabriefs144's Avatar
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    Probably. It just made me angry. The very last year, I think they were having a library discard thing (you could buy some old books for quarters or for donating books). I think I ditched a bunch of them and kept the few I thought had worthwhile information (I still have Mountains Of Fame, from Chinese History).

  8. #69438
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    hehehe

    solelygrace+saiarain <3

  9. #69439
    Making the change Phazonkirby's Avatar
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    I have one book for Programming constantly on renew from the library. Da cheap lief~
    Spoiler!

    My art blog

  10. #69440

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    CS students don't need books.

    Cheap life indeed.
    viva la nagato yuki

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