(Michael Paeplow/Western Herald) Left, Ashley Washburn, a senior at WMU, helps students at the Book Information Station in Textbook Alley in The Bernhard Center. Right, Jayme Smith, a WMU freshmen, rings up senior Jon Pyle at The Textbook Alley in The Bernhard Center.
As tuition hits a 9.2 percent increase, and the encompassing package of costs that involve attending college, purchasing textbooks is an issue that brings most students to tears with frustration.
According to the Almanac 2007‑2008, students spent an average of $775 and $763 in 2005‑2006 in their college bookstores.
Terence Hudson, director of the Western Michigan University bookstore said that sales at WMU have been pretty flat the past few years, which he says is due to a drop in student enrollment but that the bookstore has maintained sales accordingly.
Hudson said that even though online book purchasing hasn’t weighed the sales down too much, the bookstore still offers incentives to students who buy from the store.
Like Textbook Express for example, which Hudson said aims mostly towards freshmen but does not exclude other classes.
“[It] makes move‑in a little easier. There is a lot of stress getting everyone moved in, so we offer to pull their books,” Hudson said.
Hudson said this also gets freshmen through the store since most freshmen will bring about 2‑3 family members, which then becomes a huge clutter in the aisles.
“It just helps everybody,” Hudson said.
Textbook Express, which Hudson said has ran for about 10 years will only cost $8 as he has to hire temporary help to pull the book distribution.
The bookstore also offers online shopping through the bookstore’s Web site: http://www.wmubookstore.com.
Hudson said the Web site helps students who don’t want to travel to Kalamazoo right away to be able to have books ready for them when they are ready to come back. The Web site is also good for students on campus who prefer a more convenient way of purchasing textbooks. The online source also charges an $8 fee.
Lowell Rinker, vice president for business and finance & CFO treasurer for the board of trustees said that the bookstore keeps re‑inventing itself to support the market of book buying.
“For bookstores to survive long term, we are reinventing ourselves to provide more and different items,” Rinker said.
Most students opt for convenience and even cheaper alternatives like amazon.com or ecampus.com, and Hudson said that if students can find better deals, then do it. But he adds that the advantage to having the bookstore is the time value provided.
Most students will wait until their classes have started to see if they will need to purchase a textbook, and if they need one right away, Web sites could take days; time that some students don’t have. That is where Textbook Express comes into play, according to Hudson.
He said online purchasing, while helpful, is indeed a great tool when students have shopped ahead of time.
Hudson said the bookstore tries to carry as many used books as they can get to help lower costs.
Rinker said also, that new books are not the biggest threat to students.
“Many folks find this hard to believe, but new books is our lowest markup of the things we sell,” Rinker said.
Potentially, the costs of books could decrease in years to come thanks to a bill that is floating around Washington. The Higher Education Amendment of 2007 (through the College Textbook Affordability and Transparency Act of 2007, which encompasses many factors to decrease college costs.
Hudson said that when the bill is finally effective, when students have to sign up for class universities will have to have titles of books needed for the course and the price of the book.
Hudson said this will cause a better buy-back list for the bookstore, and potentially put more used books on the shelves, which will bring more money to students when they go to buy back books.
But as the bill has just gained the proper signatures to pass, it will take a few years to become efficiently working.
Hudson said that new technologies on the market like the Kindle, an electronic book device provided through Amazon.com, are working to evolve the future of textbooks.
Although the Kindle currently can only hold regular text, according to online sources, Amazon is attempting to create a Kindle that will eventually hold text for colleges.
Hudson said he doesn’t know what place bookstores have in the future.
“The textbook market is starting to change due to technology,” Hudson said. “We are able to step to technology to deliver educational material. How fast? No on knows.”
