Textbooks will eat your soul.
Well, not your soul so much as your wallet. I dropped about $550 for a spring intersession class and another $150 on textbooks, and I must say the light-weight feeling of my wallet is a little disheartening.
Walking up to the counter with your armful of books, your heart drops because you know that when the books are rung up, Ramen will become a larger part of your diet. College Board, the testing group that has brought us gems like the SAT and AP tests reported book costs for the 2005-2006 academic year ranged from $801 to $904 per student.
Seriously.
Now, as much as I do like to complain about our bookstores, I stumbled across something that made me wonder if my grumbling is truly justified. The National Association of College Stores, which puts out an “FAQ on College Textbooks,” said after paying all the expenses of buying from the publisher and store operations, “a college store makes about four cents for every dollar’s worth of new textbooks sold.” So, the LSU Bookstore made a whopping six-dollar profit off me.
I think I may have misplaced my anger. It seems like my wrath should be visited upon the publishers rather than the awkward woman who can only give me five bucks during buyback. I had the brilliant idea a few semesters back to buy my books online and stick it to the man. You see, the international English versions of textbooks are often a good bit cheaper-some even 25 percent cheaper according to the NACS. I enjoyed the money I saved and was proud of my defiance against those who were plundering my bank account.
But I was played.
The reason those books are so cheap on the Internet is because the United States book publishers sell them abroad to wholesalers at hugely-discounted rates. They still have my money.
These prices grow at twice the rate of inflation and wonder how we can pull off affording our books with our impressive paying jobs. Not everyone comes here with tons of cash. There are laws people are trying to pass, groups urging teachers to chose cheaper books and many people begging publishers to drop costs. They haven’t gone far. Until things change, I’m going to keep buying my books on the Internet, checking them out from the library or borrowing them from classmates. I urge you to do the same.
—-Geoff is shopping for textbooks. Contact him at [email protected]