I can’t seem to get over this. A week or so ago, I found a receipt in one of my books. It was for the book I had just purchased used for $189. But the receipt said it was purchased a year and a half earlier for $20 less. And I presume in less or equal used condition other than time. Is there a time-value-of-money concept for textbooks that I don’t know about?
You can’t argue scarcity caused the price increase. And when I return it, I know I’ll be getting less than 50% of the book value, so it is off to private sale. But come on, $20 more for a year of it being sold, sold back to the bookstore, resold, and so on for anywhere from 2, to 4 semesters. If that is true, the company made somewhere along the lines of $90*4 in profit on this book alone. And I think I’m conservative about the buyback price for books. I bought one for $18 and got only $1.80 on the buyback. That book is still on my shelf. Even I have a threshold of absurdity.
So, I’m willing to relaunch “HATCHbooks.com” as a textbook exchange, completely free of charge for students, and I won’t allow booksellers [other than students] onboard. I might limit it to HOOD for now, since I’ll be able to at least meet the students who register.
What do you think?
Update: There is a wiki in place right now, it forwards to hatchbooks.jameshatch.com which will move to its own dedicated server if it takes off. I’m working on a dozen or so projects at a time, so there is limited forward motion on this one for now.