Cheap Textbooks

College textbooks are expensive. Everyone knows that. But not everyone can tell you why they are expensive. The campus bookstore is easy to blame, because that's who gets your money. College bookstores typically make a 20% or 25% profit on new college textbooks, which is not actually that high a profit margin for a retail business (by comparison an apparel retailer might make a 50% or more profit on selling clothes). Most of the college bookstore's profit comes from used textbooks and other merchandise, including clothes, gifts, etc.

Nevertheless, you can see that a large part of the high retail price translates directly into publisher profits. It's no secret that book publishing is a profitable business, and the college textbooks industry is no different. What can you do? Well, the obvious thing is to buy used college textbooks. The best thing to do is to buy used textbooks when you can. Besides the fact that used textbooks are cheaper, by buying used textbooks you're essentially refusing to support the publisher's high profits on new college textbooks. The publishers hate the used textbooks market more than anyone, because they only make money on new textbooks. When you buy used textbooks, the profits go mostly to the bookstore you buy from. By buying used, you are reducing the demand for new college textbooks and in the long run this might serve to bring down the price of new college textbooks.

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