I have many consistent thoughts on my mind, but one of the biggies is this: Does BYU give me what I am paying for?
When it comes to textbooks, here is the answer. No. I can't even walk by the place without the threat of losing money looming over my head. The textbook industry is a racket, and even though you may think otherwise of a Church-sponsored institution, the BYU Bookstore is out there to make a profit.
The only redeeming factor of making your textbook transactions through BYU is the darn convenience of it all. You're already there, you can see what condition the books are in, you can buy them in a hurry and sell them for a little extra Christmas cash before you go home for finals, you don't have to deal with sketchy online presences, there is no shipping, and you can basically forget about them the moment the semester ends.
But it will never be a monetarily good deal. Selling back perfectly new books at 50% of what I bought them for? It's like at the end of my first semester at BYU, someone shanked me and I feel the hurt of it at the end of every subsequent semester.
So, here is my list of how to get a good deal.
1) Don't buy any of your books ever. You never know if the books the professors assign are actually helpful, so obviously, do not give them the benefit of the doubt. Give yourself a little extra cash and just forgo the whole institution. Guess what? The library probably has them. If not, make a friend and take them out to eat once in awhile in exchange for a few hours with their books before finals.
That is the only strategy, my friends. If you buy textbooks, you will always get ripped off, either in time or convenience. It's worth the extra $300 in your pocket to just stay away from booksellers and struggle a little more throughout the semester. Dig it.
Hi Rachel. Your favorite Bookstore here. We just wanted to see if we could help you feel a little better. You see, we are a not-for-profit Bookstore and all the money that we make goes straight back into supporting the university. Anyway with that said we agree with you that the textbook industry is pretty vicious, but here are three ways to beat the system :
ReplyDelete(1) bookexchange.byu.edu It's like Craigslist but specifically for BYU students' textbooks. You can buy and sell directly to other students, negotiate your own prices. You might find someone selling a book for cheaper and also somebody willing to pay more than us.
(2) Amazon. We're not going to hide from the fact that Amazon has cheap prices on textbooks. Go to booklist.byu.edu and compare prices directly. Be sure to look at used and rental prices. Sometimes they win. Sometimes we win. La vie est comme ca. Just buy whatever is cheapest.
(3) Talk to your professors. Your advice about professors sometimes not even using the textbooks they make you buy is correct. Email your professors to find out what books to get. Ask if you can use old or international editions. If the prof only needs you to read the textbook for part of the semester, go grab it from the HBLL before somebody else does.
Thanks for the post Rachel! Hopefully this makes you think of us as a little more helpful and a little less like extortionists. Merry Christmas to you!