Students parting out textbooks to avoid bookstore buyback

One hundred fifty per cent increase in return

By Chandler Walter, Humour Editor

Some students have found a way around the robbery of the end of semester bookstore buyback, and have taken to the Internet to enlarge their community.

“Textbook junkyards” are popping up all over the Internet, with many students taking it upon themselves to buy back their classmate’s books, and they’re managing to do it at a price higher than that offered by the book store.

Clyde Jackson, a second year student in Douglas College’s creative writing program, has been buying all the textbooks that he can get his hands on during the end of the year.

“It’s pretty easy, actually. I just sit myself down in from the of the bookstore and tell students looking to sell back their books that I can give them twice as much as what the bookstore is giving them,” Jackson said. “They usually walk out of there with books that they paid hundreds of dollars for, refusing the $15 offered by the bookstore.

Jackson said that his new model of textbook resale is what keeps him in business.

“I call it parting out the book, like you would a car. Any book is made of parts: Chapters, poems, diagrams, you name it. No one needs the whole damn book, and no one wants to pay for something they’re not going to use.”

Jackson has been cutting out and rebinding the different parts of the textbooks, and selling them in multiple packages far below the rate of the book itself.

“It’s all about knowing which part will run well—sorry, read well—with each specific class.”

While this method may seem like a lot of work, Jackson said that it averages out to roughly $25 an hour for him, once all the parts have been sold.

“And I tell you, they will be sold. I’ve already got two employees under me, running the lines by the books store. We’re even starting to get some competition with other students doing the same. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all of that,” Jackson said.

The college is furious with the new buyback scheme, and Scrooge Duff, the management head of the college bookstore, said that the Textbook Junkyards were costing him a fortune.

“How am I supposed to afford another yacht if there aren’t enough books to resell to these kids for 500 per cent profit?” Duff asked during an interview. “Oh, these kids can’t afford to buy from the bookstore? What are they spending their student loans on anyways, food and shelter? Ridiculous.”