Kelsey Mays
Living Editor
Restocking for new semester (Photo coutesy Anela Holck/ Assistant Photo Editor)
Fernando Uribe lounges with his mother at a round table in the Oasis. A backward Waves baseball cap partially covers his curly dark hair, and a white T-shirt and jeans hang off his thin, dark-featured frame. He chats casually as his mother flips through sheets of registrar paperwork. An incoming freshman from Westlake Village, Uribe doesn’t reflect the typical freshmen anxiety over meeting new people — he’s confident there will be mixers aplenty from the orientation staff.
But he has yet to buy books. Though he doesn’t yet have his class schedule, his mind is set on where to go. “I’m going to get them at the bookstore,” he says.
He’s heard of buying books online, but thinks that for now the simplest choice is at the Follett bookstore down the hall: “ItÕs probably more convenient, since IÕm on campus.”
Uribe’s attitude is shared by students looking for the most convenient choice, but many feel otherwise. With books costing well into the hundreds of dollars each semester, many students find alternatives from online used-book giants such as Half.com and Amazon.com.
Half.com, a property of eBay since 2000, recently highlighted the results of an affiliated Survey.com study that found 43 percent of students have not purchased a book for class due to high prices, and more than half will dip into their savings this year to purchase books.
To answer this, sites ranging from Half.com to Cheapest-Textbooks.com have sprung up over recent years. Some offer their own network of seller-to-buyer transaction tools, while others simply collect the best prices among established online leaders. To combat the uncertainties of online shopping, sites offer seller confidence indicators and alert systems for deals gone wrong. Express shipping options and extensive libraries complete the package.
On the whole, it’s cheaper to buy online, but it’s not a blanket case. Depending on the price of the book and how recently it was published, some online copies are even more expensive than their bookstore counterparts. Despite some extensive collections — Half.com, for example, has 30 different categories of textbooks alone — not all books may be available, especially those published recently.
Online books don’t carry a sales tax Ð saving just over 8 percent Ð but shipping and handling adds a few extra dollars and can take as long as 30 days for arrival. That’s a problem when students are buying books near or at the start of class, so most sites offer some sort of expedited mail delivery for a small premium.
The campus bookstore, run by a division of Illinois-based Follett Higher Education Group, maintains their defense in simple terms: “We have the right book, and it’s the book for your class,” said Accounting Manager Mark Nagy.
Follett’s Web site, efollett.com, also allows the students to access an online database with their university, classes and required books, and then to purchase them online if they choose.
“Both the bookstore and efollett.com have all the class materials that a student needs…Other online vendors require the student to find a box, pay for shipping and then wait for a replacement or refund,” the company wrote in an e-mail statement.
The convenience almost always carries a premium, but the bookstore offers two programs to compensate: They’ll buy books back at the end of the semester, provided there’s still demand for them, and they sell used books for 25 percent off a new copy’s price. Depending on the class, books may be available as early as the end of the previous semester.
Follett won’t give up ground without a fight. Last year the bookstore sponsored advertisements promoting their better match to student classes than online Web sites such as “Half-truths.com” — a fictitious site alluding to Half.com. Follett won’t comment directly on any plans for future campaigns against competing Web sites, only saying via e-mail that they will continue to promote the benefits of the bookstore and efollett.com as a textbook source.
Although students such as Uribe remain loyal to the bookstore, attitudes arenÕt the same among older students. There’s varying attitudes ranging from those who donÕt yet know about online options to those who are fiercely loyal to certain Web sites — and outspoken about their opposition to the bookstore — even within the same grades.
“I buy all my books from Half.com,” said junior Leinani Tolentino. “It cost $200 and if I went to the bookstore it would probably cost $450. I think the bookstore is ripping off students.”
But another junior, Lindsay Kleban, said she doesn’t even know what Half.com is. “Right now IÕm comparing prices,” she said, but then conceded: “Books are so expensive.”
It bucks the conventional wisdom that the older students get, the more willing they would be to explore multiple options. But for many, it’s just another year to decide between chasing Internet deals, though dubious they may be, and the fail-safe convenience of the bookstore.
“Online is the best choice if you can find the right book,” senior Steve Case said. “The highest prices will always be at the bookstore, but you canÕt beat the convenience there.”
It’s a choice students continue to weigh every semester.
08-29-2005
