Why not? The bookstores are robbing the students.

Or, more correctly, the bookstores are complicit in the publishers robbing the students.

"Why, back in my day, textbooks cost a nickle! And they were good textbooks too...."

Honestly, I was just thinking about this.

It's honestly not a bad idea to rob, if you are going to rob some place.

At end of semester they buy back textbooks, I sold mine for 400 dollars cash. There were 20 people infront of me and 20 behind me.

Meaning they have a lot of cash on hand.

Gimme all your money! And a copy of Gibson, 14th edition!

µTorrent

Yes it is. Just don't get caught. (The Golden Rule)

Text books are a huge farking scam. Screw them. I hope someone poops in their cereal.
"Poops in who's cereal?", you might ask.
I don't care. As long as there is poop in somebody's cereal at the end of the day I busy town throw for five if ever you see may cap star in.

Willie Sutton approves!

Aamelrons: Honestly, I was just thinking about this.

It's honestly not a bad idea to rob, if you are going to rob some place.

At end of semester they buy back textbooks, I sold mine for 400 dollars cash. There were 20 people infront of me and 20 behind me.

Meaning they have a lot of cash on hand.

Did you have a dump-truck full of books? Every time I try to sell my $150 textbooks back, they offer me like $5. I don't even try any more, I'd rather keep the book than the 5 bucks.

\Fark textbook prices
\\I've had semesters where my books cost more than tuition

"No refunds."

Louisiana_Sitar_Club: As long as there is poop in somebody's cereal at the end of the day I busy town throw for five if ever you see may cap star in.

Informer?

Cranialsodomy: Why not? The bookstores are robbing the students.

Or, more correctly, the bookstores are complicit in the publishers robbing the students.

If you rob someone who's trying to rob you, does that count as self-defense?

i had very rich friends in college that (i shiat you not) would just throw away/give away their books at the end of the semester. the cash back they got for walking them down to the bookstore was not worth the trip for them. selling them online? forget it. way too much work.

if you are buying or selling anything in a college bookstore besides gum or pencils, you are a silly person. use the internets.

detroitdoesntsuckthatbad: µTorrent

Word!

Thousands of ebooks for free and someone needs to steal a real book?

Now if I can just go steal an iPad to view them on.

I was lucky to attend a college which had a student book fair at the end of each semester. Students bought and sold books directly from each other. Sure you had the problem of their being new editions, but the books didn't change all that much from edition to edition and anyone with a half a brain in their heads could still follow along using the old books. The only material that changed a lot were supplemental materials and workbooks written by the teacher (which you had to buy at the local print shop. They still soaked you for those.)

My 12 year old goes to school with a 45 pound bag of books when all the books he'd use from kindergarten thru college would fit on a cheap thumb drive.

And this works because most students are too damn stupid to use an old revision.

I don't think I ever paid more than $20 for a book in college after my first semester. You have to do some hard thinking when the teacher says "Turn to page 400 we're learning X" and you have to look up X in the TOC and realize it's now on 435.

Most homework isn't even out of the book these days, and if it is they really didn't change the questions. But if they did, our library always had 2 books on hold (couldn't check out). Take in the syllabus and a nice camera and get all the homework for the semester.

And if you really want to 'rob' the book stores. Take said book.
1) Find new bar code of said book.
2) Print out and very carefully place new bar code over old bar code.
3) Sell book back to book store.
4) Profit.


/But a BIG fark You to the Linear Algebra book that intentionally scrambled the questions in the international section. They didn't even try to mask it. "In the previous problem..." but the previous problem had nothing to do with it because 2 & 3 became 4 and 12.

I was lucky enough to be able to buy the Kindle edition of a text book recently. Do you know how much easier it is to do course work when you can search your text book?

/Also, it was like $30 cheaper.

Snow-Dog: Aamelrons: Honestly, I was just thinking about this.

It's honestly not a bad idea to rob, if you are going to rob some place.

At end of semester they buy back textbooks, I sold mine for 400 dollars cash. There were 20 people infront of me and 20 behind me.

Meaning they have a lot of cash on hand.

Did you have a dump-truck full of books? Every time I try to sell my $150 textbooks back, they offer me like $5. I don't even try any more, I'd rather keep the book than the 5 bucks.

\Fark textbook prices
\\I've had semesters where my books cost more than tuition

I kept mine and sold them to some people I knew were taking the same classes the next semester. 50% off. If I didn't have a buyer lined up, I'd leave it in a cafeteria. No way am I watching the bookstore buy it from me for 10 and throw it on the shelves for 100.

Final word of advice that I discovered now that I'm back in grad school. (And this didn't exist 5 years ago when I went to school).

95% of all homework questions have their solution on google.

Type in quotes into google a unique part of the question. You'll find buried hidden links to old semesters, to other schools, etc.

Fark the cost of textbooks.

What annoyed me to the ends of the earth was the new editions. In my first year, I compared a 14th edition to a 15th edition calculus book. The questions were the same, but the chapters were moved around, and they added a lame chapter called the history of calculus or some stupid bs like that. I bought the old edition for 80$, new one was 199$......

Not only that, the prof was like I DON'T SUPPORT THE OLD EDITION. He must have been getting some kickbacks or something. So, many naive first years went and got the new book. Don't even get me started on why there were TWO answer books for ONE textbook. Why aren't the farking answers included. How the holy hell am I supposed to learn if I can't check my answers unless I can shell out an additional 40$ x 2?!?!

There were some really great profs that would have the required readings/practice questions for different editions of the book. I remember not getting enough sleep and going nuts over having to buy 15 books for a class. Turns out that prof supported every edition of that particular book and I read the list completely wrong.

If you were really broke, the prof generally would lend you the text for the semester, but they usually only had a few on hand.

/Full of anger today

The guy's 68, and still called Junior.

What's his major?

Snow-Dog: Aamelrons: Honestly, I was just thinking about this.

It's honestly not a bad idea to rob, if you are going to rob some place.

At end of semester they buy back textbooks, I sold mine for 400 dollars cash. There were 20 people infront of me and 20 behind me.

Meaning they have a lot of cash on hand.


Did you have a dump-truck full of books? Every time I try to sell my $150 textbooks back, they offer me like $5. I don't even try any more, I'd rather keep the book than the 5 bucks.

\Fark textbook prices
\\I've had semesters where my books cost more than tuition

6 books, Our store is "reasonable". Buy new book 180, used 130, sell back to them for 70.

mr.april.esq: What annoyed me to the ends of the earth was the new editions. In my first year, I compared a 14th edition to a 15th edition calculus book. The questions were the same, but the chapters were moved around, and they added a lame chapter called the history of calculus or some stupid bs like that. I bought the old edition for 80$, new one was 199$......

Not only that, the prof was like I DON'T SUPPORT THE OLD EDITION. He must have been getting some kickbacks or something. So, many naive first years went and got the new book. Don't even get me started on why there were TWO answer books for ONE textbook. Why aren't the farking answers included. How the holy hell am I supposed to learn if I can't check my answers unless I can shell out an additional 40$ x 2?!?!

Yes, fark this. Due to a term-long gap in one of the course sets I was taking, I ended up needing a new version of a textbook I already had and not noticing it. The differences? They moved/changed an occasional problem. 80% of the questions were the same. It took me three weeks or so before I caught on. A while to actually get the first assignment back and a bit longer to realize why, no matter how many times I tried reworking the questions I had marked wrong, I always came up with the same answers.

/csb

CSB time :

When I was in college I was accused very forcefully by the campus PD of stealing books to sell back later. I sold back a bunch of books I had used during class including 1 which I hadn't used.

Maybe 4 hours later the Keystone cops call me into the office and put the light on me and all that. I'm at the stereotypical bare desk in the bare office with 2 guys semi grilling me.

"why did you return that book without the spine broken?"
" I didn't read it?"
"You mean you stole it and tried to return it!"
"No, if you check I returned other books from that class, which I took for this semester, we didn't get into that book and I didn't need to read it"
"That's crap! You know you did it, stop stalling!"

So we go around and around for like an hour on this. I knew they were waiting to drop some other nonsense, and finally the one guy says

"well, we've heard that you've been going around campus saying that the bookstore is an easy target to steal from!"
"Yes, I did say that"
"Ah ha! So you did steal those books and probably other stuff too!"
"Nope, I just know it's an easy target!"
"How?"
"I just know, trust me, it's an easy target"

One of my best friends had been supplementing his income by stealing stuff from the store and selling it to other people. Sweatshirts, sweatpants, books, whatever.

So, finally they made me sign an affidavit and promised to see me again really soon. Of course they didn't because I hadn't stolen anything.

Wow, I just googled the head Keystone cop and he's a state trooper now. That's NOT good. This guy was a clown.

I used to work at college bookstores and I am a bit of an apologist.
Shoplifting was a major problem - one year we recorded over $1 million in shrink.

Here's how it works:
1. The publisher and reps get in good with someone at the department or with the professor.
2. The department or professor gets kick backs from the publisher when they decide what books they want to use the following semester.
3. The publisher is constantly pushing out new editions of books for no real reason (adding a useless CD or online content).
4. The department/professor only gets kick backs if they use the books the the publisher is still printing.
5. The publisher will randomly stop printing earlier editions or even current editions when not bundled with extra crap forcing professors to adopt the new edition.
6. The department/professor tells the bookstore what books to order.
7. The school rents space to the bookstore on campus under a multi-year contract while trying to get the highest rent and the lowest mark-up.
8. Small-time bookstores are kicked out and Barnes&Noble moves in and charges 8%-25% markup on each book (packages require higher markups since they aren't returnable to the publisher if unwrapped).
9. The bookstore makes the majority of its money on packages (short term) and used books (long term).
10. Students hate the bookstore because the professor/department are screwing everyone by way of the publishers.

The place the bookstores are screwing the students most is on apparel and souvenirs.

The number of books bought back is based on historical sales for the classes that have confirmed they will be reusing the books. If only 50% of the students bought the book for the last 3 semesters, that's what is bought back for next semester. That's not taking into account there are probably some used books left on the shelf.

The worst are the professors who wait until the last minute to put in their book orders and prevent the bookstore from buying any of the books back from their students.

I so have an idea.

0-470-40901-0 isbn, book on ebay/amazon 60-70.

at the bookstore
http://www.lm-bookstore.com/northside/sell_main.asp?

110 buyback.

Beermoney!

Honest Bender: I was lucky enough to be able to buy the Kindle edition of a text book recently. Do you know how much easier it is to do course work when you can search your text book?

/Also, it was like $30 cheaper.

And weighs less

darkscout: Final word of advice that I discovered now that I'm back in grad school. (And this didn't exist 5 years ago when I went to school).

95% of all homework questions have their solution on google.

Type in quotes into google a unique part of the question. You'll find buried hidden links to old semesters, to other schools, etc.

You are one hell of a scam artist, aren't you?

imontheinternet: Cranialsodomy: Why not? The bookstores are robbing the students.

Or, more correctly, the bookstores are complicit in the publishers robbing the students.

If you rob someone who's trying to rob you, does that count as self-defense?

No, but if you're charged with robbery instead of theft because you used force you might be able to claim the affirmative defense of self-defense to nullify the use-of-force element and prevent being convicted of robbery. If the prosecutor uses an alternate theory of theft, though, you could still get convicted of theft.

/Lawyer.

chookbillion: You are one hell of a scam artist, aren't you?

I'm in an American college and deal with the book store.

I learn from the best.

Robbing your college educating a 68-yr-old bookstore at taxpayer expense is probably not the best way to deal with the high price of textbooks debt issues our country and states are dealing with.

FTFS.

Land Ark: I used to work at college bookstores and I am a bit of an apologist.
Shoplifting was a major problem - one year we recorded over $1 million in shrink.

Here's how it works:
1. The publisher and reps get in good with someone at the department or with the professor.
2. The department or professor gets kick backs from the publisher when they decide what books they want to use the following semester.
3. The publisher is constantly pushing out new editions of books for no real reason (adding a useless CD or online content).
4. The department/professor only gets kick backs if they use the books the the publisher is still printing.
5. The publisher will randomly stop printing earlier editions or even current editions when not bundled with extra crap forcing professors to adopt the new edition.
6. The department/professor tells the bookstore what books to order.
7. The school rents space to the bookstore on campus under a multi-year contract while trying to get the highest rent and the lowest mark-up.
8. Small-time bookstores are kicked out and Barnes&Noble moves in and charges 8%-25% markup on each book (packages require higher markups since they aren't returnable to the publisher if unwrapped).
9. The bookstore makes the majority of its money on packages (short term) and used books (long term).
10. Students hate the bookstore because the professor/department are screwing everyone by way of the publishers.

The place the bookstores are screwing the students most is on apparel and souvenirs.

The number of books bought back is based on historical sales for the classes that have confirmed they will be reusing the books. If only 50% of the students bought the book for the last 3 semesters, that's what is bought back for next semester. That's not taking into account there are probably some used books left on the shelf.

The worst are the professors who wait until the last minute to put in their book orders and prevent the bookstore from buying any of the books back from their students.

I'm calling bullshiat. I'm an adjunct professor and none of what you say is remotely true in my department. I encourage students to avoid the stupid thieving bookstore altogether, and get their books on Amazon, and to buy next semester's books in the middle or end of the current semester when they are at fire sale prices (as opposed to the beginning of the semester). I don't get any farking kickbacks, nor have they ever been offered. Any book rep who tried that would be thrown out of our department, and would likely be fired that day.

I had a professor in one of my CompSci classes penalize students based on their textbook. In his view, if you are savvy enough to be taking CompSci classes, then you should either be pirating your books, or at least buying them for next to nothing online as "international editions". Anyone that bought new from the campus bookstore had a very rough semester with lots of ridicule.

Boxingoutsider: So, finally they made me sign an affidavit and promised to see me again really soon

Why didn't you tell them to go fark themselves? Made you sign? Lame.

Should have sued them for false imprisonment.

IAALBNYL.

A FARK textbook trading pool might just work.

1) Offer a textbook that you are willing to just freaking give away. ISBN gets listed on a site.
2) Someone finds it, and pays for shipping
3) Second student uses textbook.
4) Second student lists on site.
5) goto 1

GBB: I had a professor in one of my CompSci classes penalize students based on their textbook. In his view, if you are savvy enough to be taking CompSci classes, then you should either be pirating your books, or at least buying them for next to nothing online as "international editions"

God bless the international edition.

Also, I had an accounting class where the professor pointed out that he co-authored the book we were using. He went on to say that as an author, he received very little on the sales of the book. A couple classes later, several students asked if we could use previous editions of his textbook. He told us it was fine, but the page number may be different and he would only give page numbers from the current edition because he "didn't know the page numbers from the previous". Now, I can understand if he said, "I don't want to bother to check a couple random pages and tell you a quick page number conversion from old to new", but he made it sound like the differences could be so great as not not being reliable. At some point later on, he starts telling us of how textbook revision works. Apparently, publishers limit the amount of revisions on books. They only allow a couple major changes; either additional chapters, deleting chapters, moving chapters, or rewriting chapters. They will allow unlimited number of grammatical and spelling fixes, but limited number of minor changes to the actual content. Also, they are required to change the figures in the problems, but not required to rewrite the questions themselves. So, in a sense, there is little change in the content, but all the problems will have different figures that would make it difficult to follow along. The best part of this entire semester was the time he mentioned that he got major kickbacks for getting the University to use his book.

csb

fireclown: GBB: I had a professor in one of my CompSci classes penalize students based on their textbook. In his view, if you are savvy enough to be taking CompSci classes, then you should either be pirating your books, or at least buying them for next to nothing online as "international editions"

God bless the international edition.

I don't think the internationals believe in our GOD, or vise versa.

Do you people live in another dimension where bittorrent and photocopiers don't exist?

StanTheMan:

I'm calling bullshiat. I'm an adjunct professor and none of what you say is remotely true in my department. I encourage students to avoid the stupid thieving bookstore altogether, and get their books on Amazon, and to buy next semester's books in the middle or end of the current semester when they are at fire sale prices (as opposed to the beginning of the semester). I don't get any farking kickbacks, nor have they ever been offered. Any book rep who tried that would be thrown out of our department, and would likely be fired that day.

There are certainly professors who know how to get around the process, but the vast majority of schools require that the professor select textbooks that are able to be ordered by the campus bookstore as per the contract. If you tell the students to go another route, good for you, and they should. However you will always have students who believe it is easier to get the books at the store on campus than have to order them. Some want to be 100% sure they are getting the right books and think that's the only way to be sure. And then there are the ones who wait until the last minute when they actually need to have the book to get around to buying it.

I'm surprised that you don't know that there is no "fire sale" at the end of the semester - at least not at the campus bookstore. At about the mid-point in the semester the bookstore sends all the unsold new copies back to the publisher for a refund/credit (certainly not 100%).

As far as kickbacks, good for you for not succumbing to it - but rest assured there is likely someone at your school getting something. And those who are certainly aren't talking about it. The reps don't target the low men on the totem pole anyway, they go for the people in charge of, say, the 100 level classes where all the professors have to use the same books. And trust me, a publishing rep would never be fired for offering kickbacks.

I should say that I worked at stores on major university (>25,000 students) and community college (>40,000 students) campuses, so I don't know if things are different at smaller schools. They seem like they would be since the reps wouldn't see much for their efforts.

batlock666: Do you people live in another dimension where bittorrent and photocopiers don't exist?

Not all books can be found this way.

When they can, yeah, torrents are the way to go. fark the publishers.

Land Ark, you are spot on.

Had a buddy who would lift books from the store at the beginning of the semester, wander in to whatever class was using it, and offer it for $20. Made himself a tidy profit.