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Hi, I’m John Lorelli and I’m the director of bookstore services here at Santa Barbara
City College and we're here to answer a few questions about the price of textbooks. Why
are textbooks so expensive in the first place? Because textbook publishers are in the business
to make money and they make money unlike any other manufacturer of anything you might imagine
in the face of huge consumer resistance. They raise their prices to us at a very minimum
of twice a year and anywhere from 12%-20% quite often. What are some ways students can
cut down on the cost of textbooks? There are several things and I’ve made a list of them.
One, there are any number of resources available right now. Anybody who’s got two textbooks
is online selling them, so there are lots of online vendors. Don’t buy things that
are optional or listed as recommended. Most of the time those things are listed on the
shelf card with a stop sign saying stop go to class first. It’s always best to go to
class and discover if any of that optional recommended stuff is going to be used. You
can also share books. The bookstore funds a library reserve of a significant number
of books, which are determined by the library, that are on reserve for student use. Do you
offer book rentals? Yes! We have a book rental link on our website, and the college website,
the sbcc bookstore part of the college website. Would you say bookstore prices are competitive?
We compete wherever we can. We can’t compete with online vendors in many ways, so we pay
attention to what’s online and we adjust prices. We also have very very low margins.
A margin being what we have to pay for a book and what we sell it for. We have the lowest
margins of any college bookstore in Santa Barbara or any neighboring county.