Bookstore prices are explained
The Associated Students of Utah State University experienced a detailed, inside look at the USU Bookstore Thursday night.
ASUSU and the bookstore set up the in-store tour in order to give further insight to the student body. The bookstore staff also used the opportunity to answer questions ASUSU leaders had.
Different members of the bookstore staff, in turn, described in depth its different departments and explained how funds are used.
Kevin Kerr, associate director of the Bookstore, explained the pricing of the Bookstore’s textbooks when questioned by ASUSU members.
“There is a big competition with the online market,” he said, “but that is mostly for used books. At our store, you have to cover overhead for store costs. A portion of that is covered through a slightly higher used book price.”
Kerr said a lot of the overhead costs pay for the store’s improvement.
“For example, a few years ago, a student would wait in line for an average 45 minutes during the back-to-school rush,” he said. “Now, with good management and resources, we’ve cut that down to about eight minutes this year.”
Kerr also said there are some advantages to buying used books at the Bookstore.
“When you buy a used book online, you don’t see what you’re paying for. The book may have rips, tears and may be in bad condition. When you buy a used book here, you can look through a stack of 20 books and pick out the best one for the same price as the worst one in the stack,” he said.
Another Bookstore employee, Susan Miller, said the store buys back used textbooks depending on demand.
“We have to make our best estimate as to how many used books we can sell. Then we will have an excess of new books, which we can sell back to the wholeseller,” Miller said. “Obviously, we can’t send a used book back to the student who sold it to us.”
Dave Rhodes, associate director of the bookstore, gave further insight to the store’s mechanics.
“About 40 percent of our business [excluding textbooks] is with the offices around campus. We are a business and we have to be competitive,” he said.
Rhodes said students may have misconceptions about the Bookstore’s pricing.
“A lot of students come in to buy textbooks, which are naturally high-priced no matter where you buy them, and assume that the rest of the products in the store are high priced,” Rhodes said. “Most of them don’t know that most often we sell office and school supplies below retail value. The reason that a few items may cost more here than at a large-scale store is because that is the value of convenience.”
ASUSU members learned about the different departments of the bookstore. Trish Blair, who has been working for the Computer Solutions Department for 18 years, introduced ASUSU to the computer corner of the Bookstore.
“We really have some cool stuff here, and I get to show it to the students,” she said.
Blair commented on some of the more popular items.
“We’ve sold over 600 USB keys, and we sell about five iPods a day,” she said.
More information about the USU Bookstore can be found at www.bookstore.usu.edu.
-dmullen@cc.usu.edu