The average college student will spend $650 on books each year. Considering there are 12 million students, this inflates to almost $4 billion dollars a year. Furthermore, when students buy a new textbook, they will on average only recoup 35% to 50% of their costs (according to the AAP). Bookstores therefore will buy a new book back and profit 65% - 50% off the student, only to resell that book to the next student at two or three times what they gave the first student.
Students have a limited budget, and the $650 spent is not a very large sum, however, for a student – most of who are on scholarships, working minimum wage jobs, and otherwise have no real income, the $650 is a much larger amount of money. Furthermore, for students that use loans to pay for their textbooks, the hidden cost – interest – that runs on the loan, inflates this cost to two or three times the original purchase price.
The real killer is that the bookstores are responsible for a large amount of these costs, as they take profits from the students. Sure, there is not much of a market for used textbooks, it is hard to resell them to other students, and selling them online is difficult, so selling them at a fraction of the cost, to have the bookstore double or triple their profits when the next student buys the book, is really the only viable, present alternative. However, if students would hold off on the “immediate gratification” of selling their textbooks back, tools such as BookDefy allow them to swap their books, effectively shrinking the textbook marketplace, and can keep money in the pockets of college students.
Fleecing college students - and parents out of their money, only to line the pockets of the bookstore owners, that is a travesty. When you consider $4 billion is spent on new and used textbooks, how much of this money could be saved if we just swap our books?
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