Selling books back to college bookstore

[tinnean]

It's been a long time since college, and the books were a good deal cheaper back then. (although it didn't feel that way at the time.) I've googled this, and it seems all the sites are for online selling and require an ISBN number. I've also looked up the cost of buying the books from the bookstore with no luck

Comments

[borg_princess]

he couldn't sell back some of the books because the instructors were using another book for the next semester

That is TOTALLY the case IRL, ugh. A lot of times, it'd be the same damn book, only 'edition 2/3/4/etc'. Basically, they'd change the cover and rearrange chapters and then claim it's a whole new book, smh. >:[ I'd use the older editions from the library and it'd be the same as the course material anyway.

My bookstore at uni was horrible in that they only accepted 5 copies of any one book. Because obv they wanted to make a profit from selling full-priced books, so if every student sold their book second-hand, they'd lose out. I hardly ever got there in time to sell my books.

Also, are you mentioning how many books he's sold? IDK about interior design, but with my Psych textbook, one could be about %150 and when you sell it back at my uni, you get 1/3 of the price. Maybe interior design textbooks at the college you're writing about are cheaper, so that $90 could cover a few, but otherwise, it'd only seem to be enough for one or two books. I'm only speaking about my particular course at my particular uni, though, so a few books for $90 could work elsewhere.

[tinnean]

I didn't even know using older editions from the library was an option. And it's been so many years since I was in college that I don't remember the bookstore's policy about the number of books they'd take back. Since it was a state university, they tried to keep things fairly reasonable, but costs still got a bit out of hand. I tried to buy used books, but when the prof was going with a new edition, there wasn't any choice.

This is actually just a throw away line. My character is checking his wallet to see if he has enough for a taxi, and mentions 4 twenties, a ten and three singles, noting this was what he got for selling his books. And I realized that the $1000 was for an entire year, not a single semester, so we're looking at probably $500. In this case, it seems he's done really well getting $90 back.

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer. The cost of eduction is enough to make the Baby Jesus weep.