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Holiday Cheer… or …. WHAT THE CRAP?

So I just returned from the biannual book raping.  Those of you who are college students know what I’m talking about.  This is where once a semester you go to the bookstore and “sell back” your books.  In reality they take your books, bend you over, then give you pennies to the dollar for what you paid for them.  This semester I had over $300 in books… I got back a total of $82.50.

The thing that really ticked me off was that all of the books were brand spanking new (I opened them each about 2 times).  On top of that, two of them which totaled over $200 of the price paid were not being used next semester.  THEY JUST CAME OUT!!!  The profs are already bagging them…. Why?  Well, I think I know why.  One was legit.  One did have a new version come out.  The other one…. my 1,300 page law book…. the $120 version… was written by the lady who teaches the class.  She’s not using this book next semester, rather she’s going back to an older book she wrote.  This means that every bookstore in town (3 of them) has to shelf her old book again… So they have to buy it from the publisher and sell it to students.  11.4% of all profits made on book sales goes to the author themselves (per BGSU’s bookstore facts).  So when all these new books get purchased, she wins a buttload of cash.  If she reuses the book, used copies from the stores kill her cash flow.  Yes…. It’s all about the Benjamins.

Now you say, “But all knowing and extraordinarily good looking Brent, why would bookstores have to buy her old book from the publisher if they’ve used it before?  Don’t they have it in stock already?  Didn’t they buy a bunch of old ones from students before?”

To this I reply, “NO!”  See, a bookstore, like any business, hates to have inventory on the shelf.  If inventory isn’t moving, they’re sitting on degrading profits.  So, if a book is no longer used, the old copies are purchased by the stores at crazy prices (I’ve seen as low as 50 cents).  Students don’t care.  They just want to get rid of the book, so they take the low amount.  The bookstore then sells those books to other stores around the country who DO use the book, at ridiculous profits (20-60 dollars per book).  Now they no longer have the book, but have made a decent amount of money on it.  So when the old book comes back into usage a few, couple, single year later, they buy all new books from the publisher and then the prof reaps all the benefits of her 11.4% payout.

So is it by design?  Yeah…. She hoed us good…. She can’t possibly complain about the book since SHE FREAKING WROTE IT!  So why is she going to the older version?  Cuz she wants money.  Who suffers?  We do.  What can we do about it?  Squat.

This kind of reminds me of the fact that we have to pay a fee to apply for graduation…. How janky is that?  Yes, I’ve given you 60,000 dollars over 4 years….. But I know that you need my extra fee for you to say, “Yeah, you can graduate.”  Freaking money-mongers…. I hate this robber baron system…. But again, what am I going to do about it?  NOTHING!  Why?  Cuz I’m just a cow moving through the herd…. Moooo.