by Jeremy Hunt
Daily Lobo
Student Leif Rotsaert said he spent about $450 on textbooks at the Bookstore last fall semester, but he hasn't tried to sell them back.
"It's like pennies," he said. "It's not worth it."
Rotsaert said he didn't pay as much this semester but still spent about $300.
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"Those (publishing) companies just want to make money off us," he said. "As students, we're still going to pay - no matter what - because we're trying to get a degree."
Melanie Sparks, director of the Bookstore, said the store sets prices at 25 percent above the price it pays for the textbooks from the publishing companies. Sparks said the money that comes in from the sales pays to operate the Bookstore.
"There's no money made on textbooks at the Bookstore," she said.
The Bookstore bought almost $685,000 from students during buyback at the end of the fall semester, Sparks said. The average student got $100, she said. The Bookstore sold about $4.9 million worth of books at the beginning of the fall semester, she said.
Student John Knowles said he spent about $550 on engineering textbooks last semester, but he didn't sell them back because they're useful for reference.
Knowles said the prices at the Bookstore are excessive compared to
Amazon.com and eBay.
"They're running a business. They want to make money," he said. "They've got a virtual monopoly over the whole campus."
Knowles said he still buys his books at the Bookstore because it is more convenient.
"It's a lot easier because I can put it on my student account," he said.
Sparks said a lot of students don't sell their books back because they give them to friends or keep them for reference.
Sparks said the number of used books available to buy changes every semester.
"The spring usually has more used books because faculty don't usually change books between fall and spring," she said. "There's more of an opportunity to change the book in the summer."
The Bookstore has about a dozen major publishers, and new editions for books come out about every 18 months, Sparks said.
Rotsaert said the new editions are just another way for the publishers to make money.
"Sometimes they just revise a chapter or switch it around," he said.
Knowles said the University should do something to reduce the cost of books, because tuition keeps going up and school is too expensive.
"Or they could just keep tuition down," he said. "That'd be nice."
