OCR Text |
Show Questions about selling your used textbooks? Here are some answers from your campus bookstore... Selling back your books to the Bookstore can sometimes leave you feeling outraged. How can similar books bring such dissimilar prices? Following are some of the questions that are often asked about the book buy-back process and the answers to those questions. I?I What books can the Bookstore buy? The books that we can buy are based on the needs of both the University and several national w holesalers that deal in used college textbooks. Our list is compiled from the faculty book request that w e receive for the upcoming term. The national wholesale lists are based on composite requests for textbooks from all the colleges and universities in the U.S. The 50,000 titles that are the most requested become part of the wholesale "want lists." The next 200,000 titles do not. I? I When is the best lime to sell my books? The best time to sell your unwanted books is during the finals period preceding the term when those books will be used again. For courses that are repeated every term, it's best to .sell your books as soon as you are through with them. For courses only taught once per year, you may want to hold your books on the chance that they will be used next time the course is taught. This is a bit of a gamble as the book may not be used again or the used book wholesaler price may drop to an unacceptable level. Sometimes a book on our halfprice list may drop to the used book wholesaler list if we buy enough books to fill our stock needs. To help avoid this, bring in your books as soon as you no longer need them (right before you take your final opposed to after your final). If you need cash at any other time we do buy books all year long for the used book wholesalers. How much will I gel for my books?. Wouldn't I get a better deal if I were going to a Wasatch Front Schoon The amount paid for books depends on the market. If the book is being bought for the upcoming term at SUU we pay 60% of the new book retail price and 50% of used book retail. It doesn't matter where or when you got your book, or whether it's new or used. There are usually exceptions to the 50% rule every term. If an old edition is being used in the upcom ing term, we usually pay less than 50% due to the possibility that we may have unsold copies left at the end of the term which will have no resale value. The number of books we buy at the 60%-50% price takes into account our current stock on hand and the projected needs for the upcoming term. The amount paid for a book that we buy for a used book wholesaler is based on the price listed in their buying guides. This price varies from a high of about 1/3 of the retail price down to about 10% of retail. What are some of the books that can't be sold back? • Books that we can't buy, besides any book on the previous two lists, include most old editions (text tends to change editions every two or three years) and study guides or lab manuals that have been filled in. Even some of the books on the wholesaler's lists are listed as "no-value" as soon as their inventories reach a level that exceeds the amount felt to be needed for future college orders. How come I get so little money on the books that are not being bought for the school? The prices that the wholesalers pay are determined by juggling several factors: national school demand, national student supply, age of the book (is a new edition expected any time soon?), average new book wholesale cost, and the prices paid by other used book wholesalers. The wholesaler also incurs personnel costs, travel costs, warehousing costs, and freight costs to ship the books to the warehouse. After these costs have been incurred, they then hope to resell he books to other colleges in the U.S. at 40% to 50% of the average retail price. Even then about 1/4 of all the books they buy for their resale operation are not bought by other colleges and end up as no-value old editions. The colleges and universities in Salt Lake City and other Utah cities (as well as most of the schools across the nation) conduct their used books for both themselves and the book wholesalers and the use the same wholesalers that we use here. The prices paid for the books will be essentially the same. It is possible that a higher percentage of a term's titles are re--used every term at some of the larger schools (where more classes are offered every term as opposed to skipping terms; only o ne out of four books are never used again). This w ould increase the proportion of used books bought back at 50% o n their buying list. We try hard, how ever, to make up for this disparity by diligently working with our used book wholesalers to provide you with the used books that we can't obtain from our own finals buy-back. This allows us to provide you a proportion of used books to new books that puts our store in the top 10% of all the nation's colleges in past years. All these special conditions seem a little fishy...are you sure you're not just blowing a bunch of sm~ke? All this may seem confusing, but that's due to the nature of the different markets for the books. The new textbooks retail market, the used textbook retail market arfd the used textbook wholesale market are interrelated, but definitely distinct entities. All are marked by different opportunities and pitfalls. The policies that have been developed over the years keep each industry healthy yet competitive. This may have been· more information than you wanted, but it is offered with the hope of shedding some light on a subject often misunderstood. |