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

[corvideye]

Just in case you do need more detail for this, here's a page from a large university bookstore that talks about return policies etc.

[corvideye]

Sorry... the link:
http://uoduckstore.com/students/index.php

[tinnean]

Thanks for the link. This will help.

[mackenziesmomma]

I still have about half my community college textbooks for exactly this reason. You can rarely sell books back for a good margin and a lot of times they either limit the number they accept in return or limit the amount of time they accept them period (for example- my college only bought back books for 3 days during finals for a total amount of about 10 hours over that time period) so that might be a consideration as well.

So $90 is *totally* viable for the amount back.

[tinnean]

I'd heard about colleges only buying back during a certain period. Sadly, it's been so long for me that I can't remember what mine did. I' put that he had to leave campus before the buyback period, but I need him to have some loose cash. He can bring this up to another character though.

Thank you!

[parmalokwen]

Previous comment attempt deleted for incompleteness. I do not like this new system

[tinnean]

It would have been $500 for the semester. The tryptophan from yesterday's meal did a number on the little gray cells.

He needed to sell/dispose of his spring semester books. This is the end of his junior year, so he'd have sold the fall semester's books.

The $500/year for supplies would be split between the 2 semesters, there are lab fees and those supplies, and others have mentioned software, which wouldn't be accepted for returns. I don't think I'll bring up the total cost of books/supplies for the length of the program.

Thanks so much for commenting. It's been a big help.

[parmalokwen]

You might want to contact a community college and ask about lab fees and software expenses for Interior Design students. Because not all classes have labs, and not all labs have the same fees. Some of the software is probably going to be reusable from one semester to the other, and there may be student discounts available. Some majors are more expensive than others.

[tinnean]

I'll have to look into this. Thanks for the suggestion!

[tinnean]

Thank you! It's always great to have more sites to research!

[longrun2]

It is a *very* long time since I was at College in the UK but it looks like a bit of a rip-off to me. Of course, when a new edition had come out the old one was unsaleable but for those still in use Blackwell's (a *commercial* bookshop) generally bought them back at half-price for books in good condition which it sold second-hand at two-thirds the new price (reducing both for third-hand and fourth-hand books) and my college had a "Book Mart" which only had a 10% margin between buying and re-selling prices.

[tinnean]

I think it's gotten even worse in recent years. When I was in college the books were maybe $75 brand new, (and did we scream over that!) but I don't remember ever gettting even half price back. And there weren't online bookstores, so if the college store wasn't buying them back, we were flat out of luck. There's just no justice.

[longrun2]

It has probably got worse but the *big* difference is the absence of competition. Blackwell's had a competitor less than 100 yards away and a few colleges, like mine, had student-run book exchanges, so it took a commercial margin instead of a monopolist's margin

[tinnean]

It's no wonder why kids graduate college with heavy student loans weighing them down. Even if you try for a Pell Grant, your family income has to be $50k or less, and how does a family of 4 (or 5 or more) survive on that?

You could feature a grumpy old great-uncle or sympathetic bus-driver saying that it's not fair on the younger generation.

Granddad is ticked because my MC decided to study interior design, and he's estranged from his father. But there is someone who might make that comment. He might also take the MC to task for not bringing the books to him to sell online. *g*

Thank you so much!