Bookstore combats costs

By Alisha Bailey, Reporter
Dec. 1, 2006

Before his term as Missouri Students Association president ends, John Andersen is looking to lower textbook prices for next semester.

Andersen will meet with University Bookstore General Manager Karen Jeffries and University Bookstore spokeswoman Michelle Froese on Friday to discuss possible solutions to the number of tactics that publishers use to prevent students from selling back textbooks.

"Obviously buying back books is in the student's best interest because it allows them to get cheaper prices," Andersen said. "But there are some very — I don't want to say illegal — but very extreme tactics used by textbook publishers that are certainly not in the best interest, and the bookstore and we know that. Honestly, we want the students to buy used textbooks whenever possible because they give students money, and our school money, too, so it is sort of a mutually beneficial thing."

Publishers are turning to tactics such as bundling, customizing and using pass codes as a means to keep students from buying used books.

"When you put a lot of things together, when there is a workbook included in a bundle, a pass code included in a bundle, or when there is those types of things that we refer to as consumables, in other words you use them during the semester so they can't be reused the next semester, typically what will happen is the bundle will not have buy back value, and the publisher of course likes that because that means that the next semester we don't have any choice but to sell it new again," Froese said.

Students should constructively say to faculty members that being able to sell books back is important to them, Froese said.

Faculty members have to notify the bookstore by a set deadline about which books they will be using in the next semester. The sooner the bookstore can order books, the more likely it is to secure whatever available used copies there are in the market. Otherwise, the bookstore buys new editions.

"Our job as a bookstore is to definitely facilitate learning," Jeffries said. "I mean, I can't tell a professor what is best to help teach a student. I don't know their topic, I don't know their subject, but I can encourage and help give them options if I can see that there might be a less expensive way to do the same thing for a student."

Froese said students are guaranteed 50 percent of what they paid for the textbook if it is being used next semester.

"If you are getting less than 50 percent back, that book is not being used here and is going somewhere else," Froese said.

Jeffries said it is not the bookstore's goal to make a profit from textbook sales.

"In all honesty, if our goal was to sell books, we would want those custom and we would want those bundles," she said.

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Bookstore combats costs

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