<p>Sorry, you have no concept of all the costs of running a store. As your own numbers show the margin on textbooks is not that great and stocking, returning and all the rest have relatively high labor intensive costs attached. All those books do not put themselves on the shelves. If it were such a great business most of the independent textbook stores that once were near major schools would still be around. But nearly all are gone–as are most general independent book stores.</p>
<p>Everyone in business today is out to make a profit and I don’t think a sub 10% profit is all that great. You want to start a book charity and do it all at cost go right ahead. See how long that lasts. When I was in school the UW students had the same feeling about textbook costs and decided to start their own non-profit store selling texts. It lasted just a few years a they found out working for next to nothing was not much fun and they still lost money. The also started a student run pharmacy business (over 30 years ago) and that’s still around as margins on soaps, vitamins and sundries are much better than on textbooks.
So I am not impressed by your rant or your data. Ask most any prof that wrote a text and he’ll tell you he made about minimum wage for all the time he spent working on it (and they get little credit for it on their CV). A few are homeruns but most are not even singles.</p>
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