<p>I was just down visiting DS and while I was waiting for him in the campus bookstore, I overheard that it was closing! What? I asked DS if this was true and he said yes. Most everyone buys books on line so no more need for the bookstore. It sounded as if a very small portion of the store would stay open to sell t-shirts, etc but no more textbooks available in the campus bookstore. A little on-line search found an article Larry</a> Wilson: What does campus' bookstore closure say? - Pasadena Star-News that confirmed the news. Any other campus bookstores closing?</p>
<p>As far as I know, the U bookstores at in-state flagship U & our kids private U (USoCal) are both staying open. They sell a lot of “logo” gear for the Us, as well as some textbooks. I’m glad they’re around because it’s convenient for the students who don’t have to scramble to decide where to purchase on-line, especially for summer school. My S rarely buys anything at the campus bookstore but D seems to find it helpful & convenient.</p>
<p>Yes, people who save a few bucks buying on-line have to know there is a real cost to the local college community. It’s really sad.
I remember being shocked last year when my school’s large bookstore that had a full floor of general books had reduced that book section to a small corner on the floor with the Tshirts and stuff. The former book floor was now office space.</p>
<p>Buying online and used from places like Amazon Marketplace saves more than a few dollars.</p>
<p>I say let capitalism work; let the dinosaur bookstores fail. No bail outs!</p>
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<p>The implication being that books are no longer available to the student? I thought that is what the Library is for.</p>
<p>Maybe the college book store needs to evolve to being an order taker. Kids come in, place an order for their books, pay a slight service charge over the Amazon price for the convenience, pick up their books in a day or two (book store has Amazon Prime membership that gives the book store free 2 day shipping)</p>
<p>My local community college found a way around this. For my summer classes, I HAD to buy books from the college store because they carried exclusive, school specific editions of the textbooks!!!</p>
<p>Perhaps another edition would do the job, but I went ahead and paid extra for the special editions of the books, as required by the professors.</p>
<p>Our bookstore still sells books…however, after this last semester, who knows for how much longer?</p>
<p>For whatever reason last semester, our bookstore didn’t order nearly enough books for the number of students that we had. The bookstore was blaming on the professors, the professors were blaming it on the bookstore. It ended up taking a month (maybe even 6 weeks) into the semester before we all got all of the books we needed.</p>
<p>Long story short, I’ll be renting what textbooks I can from Chegg next semester. It saves a LOT of money and I don’t have to go through the bookstore for as many of my books…just the ones the professors write or that Chegg simply doesn’t have.</p>
<p>It is very convenient to be able to look over the texts and get an idea of what the course might be like and also look over the “optional” texts. The prices at most bookstores are substantially higher than what you can get them for elsewhere, which is partly to pay overhead and convenience fees.</p>
<p>I hope if the bookstores become “order takers,” they still have at least one or a few copies of the texts around so students & others can peruse them before ordering.</p>
<p>S rarely used the bookstore even in HS. He would purchase most of his books from kids a year ahead of him in class for minimal amounts and then resell them to kids slightly younger than him. He was able to make money most terms this way. D, on the other hand, mostly used the bookstore & still has many of her HS books around the house. They are very different kids. D also loves to re-read things she enjoyed.</p>
<p>In law school, we had some profs REQUIRE us to buy xeroxed copies (very poor quality) of their materials at the bookstore at inflated prices. My D had to do this for at least one or more classes in HS as well. That was pretty irritating, especially when the copy is so poor & prices are nearly that of a sturdier text. The only advantage was you could just carry around the pages that were relevant instead of the inches thick stack of materials.</p>
<p>Some subjects (like EE) have more “standardized” texts than others, so there are more sources to get the same materials. S loves to have a huge savings by purchasing on-line & then re-selling the text after he’s done with it. He still tends to make a profit.</p>
<p>“Yes, people who save a few bucks buying on-line have to know there is a real cost to the local college community. It’s really sad.”</p>
<p>One saves BIG bucks buying on-line. It’s not sad that college bookstores are closing. Their books are sky high, and usually the only thing that economical students use such stores for is buying college T-shirts and similar things.</p>
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<p>You’re probably better off shopping around online for a used copy and then reselling it the following year. I’ve found [url=<a href=“http://www.gettextbooks.com/]this[/url”>http://www.gettextbooks.com/]this[/url</a>] website to be a fantastic comparison shopping place. It really shows how poor of a deal many of those rental websites are.</p>
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<p>Also this is pretty much just wrong. The bookstore will still stay open selling all of the merchandise branded with Caltech on it, they’re just removing the massive amount of office supplies and books they’re offering. The office supplies isn’t a huge loss since all of those are marked up pretty steep and there’s an Office Depot less than a 10 minute walk from campus, a shorter walk than from the dorms to many buildings on larger campuses. </p>
<p>Most of the books that aren’t being sold anymore are things like Dover books and ones released by scientific publishers. The textbook section at our school store was actually pretty small, the rest of it being obscure books on obscure topics. I mean, I’m a grad student here and I didn’t even know the words in the titles to half of the books.</p>
<p>Finally, Caltech’s bookstore has actually had a very nice policy for students on buying books. If you can show a printout from Amazon, buy.com, or a bunch of other websites with the price clearly marked and it saying the book is in stock, they’d match the price of the e-tailer down to what they paid for the book. While this was great, there were still some books I was able to get US editions (hard cover) for $30 less than the book store was buying it for!</p>
<p>Anyway, there’s been discussion on campus as to how to keep the bookstore alive in some form selling textbooks. I know there’s been discussion of them stocking texts for freshmen classes and maybe a small reserve for the classes with very high enrollment. They’re also talking about having a web-based order system like OperaDad mentioned.</p>
<p>Also, if you want to take a look at the book before buying it there’s always the library!</p>
<p>I hope they do go to some sort of a web based system. DS has always just swiped his ID card to charge his books (the few he buys) to his bursar’s account. The advantage for him was that mom pays the bursars bill. Ah well, I guess he’ll be buying his own books now…</p>
<p>Well, I doubt the online sellers do any of this</p>
<p>[The</a> Badger Herald: News: Book Store donates $25,000 to UW](<a href=“http://badgerherald.com/news/2009/05/01/book_store_donates_2.php]The”>http://badgerherald.com/news/2009/05/01/book_store_donates_2.php)</p>
<p>[UW-Madison</a> students receive undergraduate awards (May 27, 2009)](<a href=“http://www.news.wisc.edu/16773]UW-Madison”>UW-Madison students receive undergraduate awards)</p>
<p>Don’t know if you trust him with one or not, but my parents gave me a credit card linked to one of their accounts. It was only for emergencies and whatnot, but occasionally they told me they’d cover my books for the term, so I could use their CC on the various websites I usually bought from.</p>
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<p>What would you suggest? That college bookstores be granted a monoply? Or how about a government subsidy so they can undercut the on-line stores? Either one of those is anti-capitalistic. People are freely voting with their dollars and gettng what they want. I don’t see the problem.</p>
<p>Bookstores have been selling overpriced books (used or new) for generations of students. They can continue to sell logo stuff and let groups that can sell books better, do it better.</p>
<p>Do on-line stores buy back the books at the end of the year? Do they carry the course reading packs and correct optional books so you can look at them and see if you want to get them? If you drop the class do they take back the book for full price? </p>
<p>The markup on texts is 18-20%. Hardly gouging. The high prices start and end with the publishers.</p>
<p>Just to note that the library is probably not a viable alternative for most of the books one needs for college; even if it has the book (and it may not if it’s a textbook), there probably won’t be enough copies of most books.</p>
<p>What exactly is the “cost to the college community”? If the bookstore is no longer viable, then it wasn’t contributing to the college community. If it had been an important part of the college community, it would still be viable. So what are they losing if it’s not being utilized?</p>
<p>I agree, it the bookstore is not being utilized then why have a bookstore? DS already uses as many internet resources as possible for texts(some free). I think I’m more curious as to whether or not this is going to be a trend as colleges look for ways to cut expenses. </p>
<p>RacinReaver,
I do trust DS, and we’ll work it out perhaps by setting up a paypal account or I’ll pay his credit card bill for books he charges. But I do hope they let the prefrosh know so they can be prepared for buying books on line. Thanks also for filling in the gaps for me about the closure of the bookstore - DS was just kind of “yeah, I’ve heard rumors”.</p>
<p>Barrons,
while on line bookstores don’t buy back books at the end of the year. DS has been successful selling his used books on line and probably makes more than he could selling it back to the bookstore.</p>
<p>My son’s bookstore has a service where they take book orders as soon as kids register for the next semester. It’s first come(order) first serve on used books, they box them up, label them with his name and he picks them up before the start of classes. I don’t know “where” the bookstore gets the books or if they take the orders, turnaround and locate the books, receive them mark them up abit and the kids pick them up…but it seems like a good business plan since they are not purchasing and stocking books the kids end up not buying and it’s convenient for the kids (if you don’t mind not knowing the fnal cost 'til you pick them up). My son hit the on-line order system right away and for all the semesters so far, he has received “used” books and saved quite alot of money over new books. In the back of my mind, I imagine a work-study kid receiving these student orders, getting on the internet and ordering what’s needed. The students don’t specify the books by name, they just specify the classes they are taking so obviously the bookstore has a list of the required book list for all the classes. His bookstore also buys back books so that probably gives the bookstore an inventory, too. I thought it was a neat system.</p>