The University of Minnesota just screwed me over.

So I went back to sell my books today, and I got $100 back for $500 worth of books. :grr:

I had a freakin' Chemistry book that I bought brand new at $150, used it for only this semester, and the assholes gave me only $50 for it. :grr: :grr: :grr:

I had two little books that costed me a total of $30 at the beginning of the semester, and I returned them in pristine condition, and guess how much back I got...$4. :grr:

Why do colleges rip us off so much for books and give us shit back for them? Don't they know that most of us have NO money and that we were counting on the money for our returns????? They reuse the books that were sold back, and sell them for 3-4 times more than what they gave back to you! It's fucking ridiculous! :grr:

I hate the God damn university system and how it's set up. :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

the publishers buy them back, for the most part. It's usually a private company and not the school.

I got 10 dollars for my entire collection my first semester, with excuses as "we're on the new version now", and "we already have enough".

It made me want to build a quick auction/meetup site for students to trade books instead of dealing with those bookstore motherfucks

Get this: The books they say they don't want back because they have too many, or are getting a newer version, can be dropped off in a box next to the buyback window. You know what they do with those books that they won't buyback? That's right...they resell them. They tell you the books are worthless, you throw the used textbook in a box, and they take those books and resell them, thus screwing you out of more money. :grr:

That will pay more for your books. Basically the way it goes is this: Universities charge a set amount for the book, but only give you back so much if the book is not to be used the next year. These internet companies, however, will find a school that is using the textbook you want to sell back and will pay more.

n/t

Brandon Eggum.

We wrestled together on an overseas exchange trip to Bulgaria 10 years ago.

This has nothing to do with anything does it?

And when my sister went there in the 90's.

You're usually better off trying to sell them to other students in the university newspaper, online, etc.

The U's payback rates are particularly low if a new edition of the same book has been released. Last year's edition is pretty hard to resell to other students.

Bottom line, though - the place is a business and has been run like one for decades.

are in the business of making money. They don't care about the students. They don't care if they screw you out of money for your books, give you incompetent professors who give you an "A" and hope you won't complain. And their bogus candyass police follow you around to make sure you have a parking sticker to park on their miserable lots 300 yards away from your class.

It's a wonder anyone learns anything in these institutions today. It wasn't always this way. I remember when they actually cared if you got an education. But that was before the corporations and the credit cards came along.

If you've been at a small college, where it's possible to know who the regular bookstore employees are, you'll know that different people come in to buy back textbooks. That's why you can do it only on certain days.

And sell them yourself. Don't ever sell them back to the University bookstore.

30% of a new textbook's price was standard procedure when I was in college, too. I told the bookstore clerk that they "damn sure" weren't going to SELL the books for 30% of their value, stalked out, and spent the rest of my college days selling my books directly to students. I figured that if I had no choice but to take a loss, I might as well cut out the middleman.

:headbang:
rocknation

That always put a damper on the end of year for me too. A lot of my books they wouldn't take back at all, so I usually just traded with friends who were taking those courses the next semester... so at least they didn't have to pay a fortune for them. :shrug:

frankly look at it this way. you get ten different chemistry professors to write a nice, hardcover, up to date chemistry book that maybe, if it becomes the standard, will sell 25,000 copies a year. that's it. They are made to last as well, bound well, on good paper, and hugely expensive to print, what with the colour and the diagrams and all. there is a very limited maket for these books, so you charge a premium, say, 100 dollars. and then the professor next smemester always wants to use the newest book, right? you don't want to teach with an outdated book, so the resale market is limited. want to save money on textbooks? become an english major, you'll buy a lot of books, but most of them are in the $20 range and are avaliable for resale, since novels and the like don't change from year to year.

I know some adult ed students buy used copies of texts from Amazon and EBay. All you have to do is go to the bookstore, copy the title, edition number, authors and ISBN from the book and run it online. Often, unless the book was released in the past couple of months, you can find somebody who wants to sell you a used copy for about half. You might have had some luck selling yours on EBay, too -- some smaller programs don't change textbooks every single time a new edition comes out, so often books that are obsolete at your school are still being used elsewhere. It's always worth a shot.

Made almost $500 this year on used textbooks... if you're going to do that, though, wait until about late August to put them up, or early September, when people are going back and will know what books they need!