Bookstore seeks higher used textbook sales

The Bookstore at Barnes & amp;Noble and Auxiliary Services are stepping up efforts to make more used books available to students.

According to Rosalind Meyers, associate vice president of Auxiliary Services, and bookstore manager Jerry Maloney, the reasoning behind the push is to lessen the burden of textbook costs on students.

" Getting used books has always been a priority, " said Meyers, " but recently . the University system has become sensitive to the problem. " A University System of Georgia report on textbook pricing showed that textbook prices are rising faster than other costs associated with college, and that the average student within the University System spends roughly 20 percent of total college costs on buying textbooks.

According to Maloney, the findings in that report were a " motivating factor " to step up efforts to acquire more used books for students to buy. Their plan to get that increase in books contains two important aspects: encouraging faculty to send in book orders in advance and increasing the amount of student book buybacks.

In order to encourage more students to sell back their used books, the bookstore has begun two initiatives. One of those initiatives, a contest to see which student organization can sell back the most books, began last semester. The organization that brought in the most used books in dollar amount won a prize of $500. This semester, along with the organizational competition, there will also be a raffle prize for one lucky student who sells back his or her books. The winner of the drawing will receive free textbooks for a semester.

According to Maloney and Jon Earle, the bookstore ' s textbook manager, their efforts last semester were successful. Used textbook sales for last January, $419,659, were nearly double that of January 2004, during which only $210,261 worth of used books was sold.

According to Meyers, Tech, as an engineering school, has a harder time obtaining used books from outside sources than do other schools. " If most of the required books are on subjects shared with the rest of the academic world, like history, sociology or English literature, used books are easy to find in the used book wholesale market, " Meyers said. " But when your core subjects are physics, calculus and chemistry, finding a large quantity of used books is more challenging. " Thus, the bookstore depends heavily on buying books back from students to fill their stock of used books.

In order to judge which books to buy back and how many of them they need, the bookstore relies on professors to send in their required books list for the next semester before the end of the current semester. In fact, the bookstore asked that faculty submit textbook adoption information for Fall 2005 by March 11.

As of now, not all teachers have submitted their lists, and the bookstore is still actively soliciting teachers for their textbook lists.

The importance of early faculty submissions of textbook requirements lies in the fact that the bookstore can pay students more for textbooks that they know with certainty will be used in the coming semester.

According to Maloney, books that teachers have confirmed for use in the following semester are put on a half-price list. That means when students sell their books back at the end of the semester, they will be paid half the value of a new book. In the end, Maloney said, the student only really spent $50 on a $100 book.

While the bookstore will buy back other books not confirmed by teachers, they can only pay market value for those books - usually only 10 to 30 percent of the original price of the book. The bookstore then resells used books at 75 percent of the price of a new book. This way, Maloney said, students save twice by selling back their used books.