Colleges Give Up On Bookstores, Send Students To Amazon

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Sending students to Amazon for books actually makes sense considering that's where most of them have been going anyway. Buying books on campus is horribly expensive and, not only is Amazon cheaper, they have Amazon Pickup Points all over the place now too.

Their reporter also found some confused freshmen trying to go textbook shopping. The school bookstore is still the best place to get branded t-shirts and serves as an on-campus convenience store, but Stony Brook and other schools have partnered with Amazon to be their official textbook provider.
 
its about time. I remember this becoming the thing waaaaayyyyy back when I was in school and being told by a faculty member that my university was making it a point with some of the very popular required classes to try and require books that at the time were hard to find elsewhere (this included other nearby universities because in 99 online sales were just starting to become a thing) and to require them faster than they could be reasonably shipped to you.
 
I tell my students to buy whatever the cheapest edition of a particular book they can find on Amazon and use that, usually in the $10 range as opposed to $90+ for the latest edition the bookstore sells. I make my own homework problems up, so older versions are fine. Now if I can convince them to stop being such cheap asses and stop going for the free shipping that apparently comes by pack mule and sometimes takes 2 weeks to get here then we'd be on to something!
 
sfsuphysics said:
I tell my students to buy whatever the cheapest edition of a particular book they can find on Amazon and use that, usually in the $10 range as opposed to $90+ for the latest edition the bookstore sells. I make my own homework problems up, so older versions are fine. Now if I can convince them to stop being such cheap asses and stop going for the free shipping that apparently comes by pack mule and sometimes takes 2 weeks to get here then we'd be on to something!
Click to expand...

That was one of the main reasons I ended up getting an Amazon Prime membership. For the ASHRAE handbooks I needed for a set of classes, I was able to get free two day shipping for it.
 
sfsuphysics said:
I tell my students to buy whatever the cheapest edition of a particular book they can find on Amazon and use that, usually in the $10 range as opposed to $90+ for the latest edition the bookstore sells. I make my own homework problems up, so older versions are fine. Now if I can convince them to stop being such cheap asses and stop going for the free shipping that apparently comes by pack mule and sometimes takes 2 weeks to get here then we'd be on to something!
Click to expand...

$90? Damn that's cheap. The worst part is when you get a book that professors at the school wrote, holy price gouging Batman. The whole college book business is stupid.
 
What about the used textbook racket? That's where the money is for the college bookstore. Buy 'em back at 25% of cover price, sell 'em for 15% off retail.
 
-Strelok- said:
$90? Damn that's cheap. The worst part is when you get a book that professors at the school wrote, holy price gouging Batman. The whole college book business is stupid.
Click to expand...

This pissed me off the most. "Hey, were going to need you to purchase this $300 book that the school created and cant be found anywhere else".
 
Now they just need to stop making books specific to certain universities and classes, just so they can try to force you to buy new, opposed to used.
 
This is like buying cables at Best Buy. Books should not be a tertiary revenue stream for the school.
 
thesmokingman said:
This is like buying cables at Best Buy. Books should not be a tertiary revenue stream for the school.
Click to expand...

They try to squeeze money out of you at every corner, and then they try to squeeze more out of you and your family with alumni and whatnot contributions. It's pretty much "Hey, you just paid us tens of thousands in tuition, could you spare another x thousand as a donation?"
 
Did anyone ever actually use their books in college? Well, outside the homework questions some classes had you do, but you could always borrow from classmates...
 
Buying books was the worst especially if you were like me and got a degree with a lot of science in it. You would buy a $125 book, and then by the time you were done with it you couldn't sell it back because there was a new addition. Amazon didn't really start selling text books until I was out of college, so my little brother was able to save some cash.
 
Nytegard said:
Did anyone ever actually use their books in college? Well, outside the homework questions some classes had you do, but you could always borrow from classmates...
Click to expand...
Yes, a lot. I also use my books in the "real world" fairly often too.
 
In 2010 my system was:

Find out where the 2nd year students are. Get them to sell me their books for 50% off retail. They were happy because that's more money then the book store would give them. Then next year, find the students who are taking all the classes I just took and offer to sell them my books for 50% off retail. They're happy, because they're saving money, and my books were free.
 
I don't assign textbooks in my classes. Between popular scientific media articles, primary scientific literature, and content I've created myself and put online, I only assign one or two mainstream press scientific books (each costing $10-20 new and even less used on Amazon). No need anymore to have students read a $100+ textbook.

On a related note, my university doesn't want us to simply send students to Amazon, but they did just outsource the bookstore to Barnes & Noble. Retail space is now entirely school-related gear and standard supplies. No actual textbooks onsite anymore, at least not that I saw.
 
My worst professor also happened to be the one that sold a new revision of his $240 each semester. A book that no one else uses in all of academia. This doesn't solve that problem. Many other classes, but there's still these assholes enriching themselves off their students.
 
I wrote notes all over my text books... I remember someone thinking I was nuts and I said that making sure I had the professors explanation beside the text when I looked it up made more sense. Most of my professors would make their notes available if you showed up for class, mostly because you paid for the class if you did not get anything from it, it was on the person taking the class to learn not the professor. My text books at community college ranged from three hundred dollars to one that cost over a thousand dollars. Books was always rough, I remember one professor shrugging and telling people that if they waited a week or two some people dropping the class would usually sell the books back to the book store and depending on the condition usually cost almost as much as a new book but might be cheap enough. I kept some when I graduated and sold some. I had think about forty text books from college when I moved out to Los Angeles... including the one on ceramics. I remember my professor telling me half the people taking the class were doing so because it was cheaper than renting studio time at a ceramics workshop or pottery shop. You could actually use a stylus and pdf maker to take notes on scanned copies and liking in tearing all the pages out and scanning them you might actually remember more about the material. grin.
 
FYI, there's a free venture out there called OpenStax, where they get tons in donations and publish free science books and the like, not physical copies mind you (although I've heard you can pay them the cost of printing if you so desire). But it seems like a worthwhile venture. The key is to get particular classes to adopt these text books.
 
I used to always buy the international versions of textbooks, sometimes they'd ship from like India and come DHL in 2 days for less than it would cost me to ship the same package back. Never never never bought from the bookstore, they must have made crazy money because it was always way over priced
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top