To see a video about the local textbook craze, click here.
As students enjoy the last rays of summer sun, campus-area booksellers are spending hours indoors stacking and organizing books.Chimes Textbook Exchange, Co-Op Bookstore and the LSU Union Bookstore are operating with extended hours this week.    The first week of school, known as “rush” to booksellers, encompasses a large amount of their business.Chris Prescott, Co-Op Bookstore manager said he is “up to his eyeballs in work.” He said he hires up to 35 extra people for the first few weeks of school and opens 25 registers in the store, compared to the one register normally open.Nick Richard, Chimes Textbook Exchange general manager, spent the past few weeks organizing books, hiring temporary help and maintaining the store’s Web site, which will be overloaded with traffic during the first week of school.As booksellers prepare, students are saving money.Douglas Walker, history junior, said book prices are “ridiculous.” Walker said he usually buys his books at the Co-Op but has bought books online from Amazon.com   because none of the local bookstores had them in stock.”Students are not choosing to buy the books. They think they are way too expensive, and they can’t wait to get rid of them,” said Jade Roth, vice president of books for Barnes and Noble College Booksellers, which runs the bookstore in the Union.Brittany Thompson, disaster sciences junior, said she usually buys her books at the Union Bookstore, even though they have higher prices.”I guess I’m just lazy,” she said.Roth said the textbook market is different from other markets because every book purchased costs the bookstores the same price.”We don’t set the prices,” Prescott said. “It is absolutely the publishers.”Prescott said pricing is standard and set by publishers nationwide, usually with a 20 percent markup on new books and 30 percent markup on used books. The percentages do not take into account shipping costs, which the booksellers pay, further reducing their profits.Publishing companies send sales representatives to professors. The professors make their book choices based on these visits, Roth said.Angelika Roy-Goldman, an instructor in the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, said she looks at the overall picture of the books when choosing which text to use. She takes into account organization, the amount of activities, student appeal and the available supplementary materials.Roy-Goldman said sales representatives did not visit her. She does not look at price when adopting a book.The first week of school is not the beginning of the book-selling process—it’s the end. The process is cyclical and on-going, Roth said.Before finals, professors turn in their book lists for the following semester. Then the bookstores buy back books based on the adoptions.Roth said Barnes and Noble pays students half of the selling price of books used for the next semester.CTX pays 60 percent of the used price if the book is being used again. As their inventory fills, the price decreases, Richard said.If a book is not used at the University, it is probably used at some other campus across the country, Roth said. “In that case, booksellers pay students based on the national wholesale value, which is usually 10 to 30 percent of the selling price.”If a new edition of the book is being used, then the book has little if any buy-back value, Roth said.”Usually the amount of books remaining when a new edition comes out is not sufficient in number to be adopted,” Roth said. “Therefore, old editions have little or no value.”Both CTX and the Union Bookstore buy back books all year.The Co-Op buys books during designated “buyback periods” at the end of each semester.All three stores buy back books regardless of where students purchased them.The three stores offer Web sites where students order books based on their course schedules. Stores ship the books to the student’s houses or students pick them up in the store.At the Union Bookstore and CTX, students order books before the semester starts and pick them up during the first week of school.Prescott said Co-Op closes the online ordering during the first week of school because of tremendous in-store traffic.”Most students like to go to class a few times before they buy their books anyway,” Prescott said. “A lot of times they don’t even need them.”Adam Landry, history sophomore, said he tries to avoid “outrageous” textbook prices by studying notes or using someone else’s book.”If someone else is taking the same course as you, why buy two books?” Landry said.—-
Contact Jack LeBlanc @ [email protected]