All throughout high school text books are passed out on the first day of class and teachers continue to haunt students to cover them. Usually after the first day or two the books are covered with decorative sleeves that “protect” the cover of the book from being damaged. Essentially the entire book and cover are free. Until freshman year of college most kids are presented with their textbooks in school.
However, once freshman year rolls around kids either get e-mails from their professors or a nice code next to their course in which the will use to purchase books. Many freshman students will go right to the school bookstore and pay extremely high prices for new or used books. Throughout the semester students will use the books and general wear and tear will occur. Now, what I seem to think is the largest scam around is that at the end of the semester when students return to the bookstore to sell back their books responses such as, “ohhh I’m sorry we can’t accept this book at this time” or “I can give you.75 cents for this one” are thrown around. Personally, when I went to the bookstore before Winter vacation to sell back my combined 500 dollars spent at the beginning of the year I knew I was going to lose money, but not almost 350 dollars! My books were a little worn, with no markings and many of them couldn’t be bought back due to new editions being published or the fact that the professor hadn’t placed the books name in the store yet. That was the first and last time that I ever dealt with buying books at the bookstore. I was in shock that the school store could get away with charging so much money and allowing students to basically go broke over books.
Since then I have found some wonderful book renting websites which seem to be working just fine. I pay a significantly lower price to rent my books for the semester and return them for free. In the long run the money I pay to have them for the semester is still less than what I would have lost at the bookstore. I completely understand the aggravation of teachers in high school treasuring their textbooks after having to pay the price myself.
I agree completely with your argument that the bookstore is terribly overpriced. And it is the bookstore, a school affiliated store, that rakes in the profits. Do you think the publisher gets royalties when the bookstore buys back books from students? Of course not! It is the bookstore that gets to line their pockets and the teachers and scholars who write the books that suffer. Yet some students have no other choice. When you are buying books with student aid, you can't go anywhere but the FSU bookstore which just ads a little more to the mountain of debt that students enter the work force burdened with.
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