College students have long been plagued by the bookstores at Universities.  The average college student is incredibly broke, we rely on student loans, money from parents or our own meager incomes while we attempt to pay our tuition, room and board, and save pennies to relieve stress on Friday or Saturday night. 

Money is always tight for a college student.  There is usually nothing, or at best a measly salary of a couple hundred dollars a week that the average student is expected to live off of while they focus on school.   Students struggle with money on a daily basis while in school, and it has always frustrated me as a fiscally struggling student that the University furthers this at least 4 times a year, when I am forced to purchase textbooks for my classes at the beginning of the semester and when I am then forced to take a fraction of the textbooks original purchase price at the end of the semester.

What makes this more frustrating, and if you are selling your textbooks back to the bookstore, please dont do this to your self, but if you look at what the bookstores offer you for a textbook and then look at what the used book is selling for, you will be shocked.   Last semester, I sold a law textbook back, a book I had purchased for 145 in the fall, only to be offered 45 when I tried to sell it back.   I had used it for less than 5 months and only highlighted some of the more important topics. The unfortunate happened though, when I saw the bookstore was selling that same book as used to other students at the price of 115.   

I have heard the argument that bookstores need to recover their profits and it is a risk, but every semester (and Ill admit, I always register late for class), I have rarely been able to find a used textbook to purchase from the bookstore and usually end up purchasing brand new books many of which the bookstores refuse to purchase from me at the end of the semester.   In any other industry, this type of monopoly would not be allowed to persist, however, for some reason college students just accept this fate and allow the bookstores to profit off of them.    I have been complaining this entire article, but I dont want to just sit here and complain.  

Rather than complaining, I have tried to take some action, it might be feeble, but its better than just griping.   Out of sheer frustration, I created a book exchange website (http://www.bookdefy.com), but getting students to join a free book exchange service has been difficult.  I have seen a couple other websites on the Internet similar to it, but most college students seem to ignore it and go for the immediate gratification of a few measly dollars for their textbooks at the end of the semester.  Why?   It seems like many students have tried to circumvent this deeply rooted bookstore monopoly, but most are content with the bookstore monopoly.  

I have rarely heard a college student say I love the bookstore or I cant believe how much money they gave me!   I usually hear my fellow students complain about the bookstores and the fact that they feel like theyve been ripped off.   Why is it that we just sit around and complain rather than taking some action?   There are 8 million college students in the US, but we all seem to be in the same boat   Let me ask you why; and why hasnt someone done something about it, and if they have, why do we still take it?