$246.82. That’s the amount of money senior Kent Ives saved buying most of his books online.

A trip to the bookstore and the painful ring of the cash register is a rite of passage for college students. However, with sites like Half.com, Amazon.com and DealOz.com offering competition for lower book prices, many are scouring the Internet for the best deal.

Students frequently buy their books from several sources. Senior Gina Dammeyer, for example, spent $70 at the bookstore, $50 online and $20 on books from another stu-dent.

Many students use the bookstore’s online reservation system to find the best deal. “I use their online reservation system to find out what books I need for my classes, and then I compare those prices to the books I find online,” Ives said.

Some students have even made a profit off of online shopping. “There’s a book I bought used online and I was able to sell it back to the bookstore for more than I bought it for,” said sophomore Tyler Sahly.

Campus store manager Matthew Voss said the bookstore is working to be relevant to students. “Some people overplay the gener-osity of online deals,” he said. “We will usu-ally be pretty close. We try to predict how many students will need and buy books.”

The bookstore is aware that students are searching for the best deal and is taking steps to make books affordable.

“If the cheapest place is used books, we buy them there and then average out the costs, so we do online shopping as well,” Voss said. “We’re working on competi-tively pricing books, and we have a lot of

help from the faculty as far as what book to choose. The more time we have to research the textbook, the more we can research the book prices and find a good price. It’s a team effort with faculty to find lower prices.”

The bookstore is also doing a pilot pro-gram for renting books, offering a rental program for Foundations of Christian Thought, Chemistry for Living and Educa-tional Psychology.

“You pay half the price and basically turn the books back in at the end of the semester. If you don’t bring books in at the end of the semester, you pay the full price,” Voss said.

According to Voss, the bookstore does not make the majority of its profit from books, but rather from other merchandise, such as Taylor apparel. “We don’t like to make money off of items that people are required to buy. We want to make sure everyone is ready for their classes and best prepared for it. We want to serve the campus,” he said. “The bookstore is owned by Taylor. Any profit that is made goes toward lower tu-ition and into Taylor University.”

According to the Campaign To Reduce College Textbook Costs, the price of text-books is rising due to the power publishers

hold over the market. One of the largest rea-sons for this is a lack of competition in the textbook publishing market. According to MakeTextbooksAffordable.org, the number of major publishers has been consolidated from several dozen to just five in the last de-cade. Another factor is that the actual con-sumers – students – do not make the de-cision of which textbook they buy. Rather, faculty decide what students need to pur-chase. Also, publishers create new editions and bundle books with CD-ROMs or Web sites to keep information up-to-date.

Junior Matt Taylor felt buying books from the bookstore helped him be best prepared for his classes. “I bought all my books from the bookstore, because with science class-es I want all the newest editions,” he said. “I looked online and I couldn’t find bet-ter prices. It’s just convenient. A lot of my classes have homework assigned on the first day, so if I order online, I risk not having the books and missing the first two home-work assignments.”

For now, the beginning of each semester will be a balancing act of being prepared for class and keeping money in students’ wal-lets.

By Stephen GrovesNews Co-Editor

Books raid students’ wallets

Freshman MinYoung You and Kevin Baker shop for text-books on Tuesday.

Timmy Huynh

September 4, 2009 Volume 97, No. 2The Voice of Taylor University