Viewpoints: Books Books Books, Bills Bills Bills

Dear Marquette Worrier,

I’ve overheard a lot of people talking about how much their books were this semester, but I haven’t even looked at my booklist yet. Am I behind, or are they too far ahead?

 

A great question deserves a great answer. First of all, you’re definitely in good shape. The last thing you want is to deal with a complete stack of books after professors mention a few of those aren’t necessary. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it’s just nicer to have not jumped the gun.

I’m glad you brought up books.

I’m definitely on board with the whole idea of books being a scam because it’s ridiculous how much some of our books cost. Luckily, now some professors have caught on to our troubles, and the tech-savvy ones will even help out here and there. For instance, sometimes the prof. can put a (hopefully legal) copy of an entire book in .pdf on D2L that you would’ve had to buy otherwise.

We need to do everything we can to save on books and whatnot before they start making every required book be a super special “Marquette Edition” that we have to buy through the bookstore. That way they can finally force people to buy from Bookmarq at outrageous prices.

But until then, stick with Amazon, Half, Chegg, and this helpful site

It’s not a boycott of Bookmarq, because we obviously don’t want to bankrupt it. Yet, it is kind of a vicious cycle, as less people will buy from Bookmarq so it will probably have to make up for it by increasing some prices. My attitude is that I’m in and out of here in only four years anyway, which doesn’t seem like much time to ruin a bookstore if i never buy from it.

And selling books back? It comes down to what you care about. If you merely want to get books off your hands, fine—sell them back to the bookstore. If you want to get some cash, go through the trouble of setting up and shipping them out through sites like Amazon Buyback.

Until next time.