 "Photo: Casey Bemis")
The university bookstore may be the handiest source of textbooks for students, but it's not always the cheapest.
"I definitely think they're overpriced," junior Eric Mileski said. "I'm just too lazy to look anywhere else when I can get the books on campus."
Terri Meinel, bookstore director, said reasons for the university prices are the books are bought through the publishers and it depends on the edition number of the book.
"The intention is just to cover our expenses," Meinel said. "We pay all of our utilities, we pay salaries, we pay overhead, we have a debt service now that we pay, the cost of merchandise and everything, so the standard in the industry is between 20 and 25 percent."
Meinel said the bookstore usually marks-up the prices along with that average unless the original book price is already overly expensive, then they would lower the margin.
UW-Whitewater also offers a rental service for most general textbooks, which do not generate any profit for the university, Meinel said. The fees of book rentals are included as a part of tuition, and are supplied at a decreased price.
"Overall I'd say they're priced very decently," junior Kris Wilkins said. "At other schools, you end up paying hundreds of dollars, whereas we rent most of ours."
However, many students end up going online to find even better prices.
"I feel books are very overpriced, and college students need all the money they can get," said freshman Tommy Olson.
The bookstore also offers used books at discounted prices, but they are not always an option when a professor wants a new edition.
"The philosophy for the rental is to provide the basic texts needed for the courses, but faculty do have the option of recommending different books through the bookstore since more specific books cannot be rented.
"The rental operations can't carry all of the books because some of them are so specific to a student's career path," Meinel said. "There's a limit to how much we can spend per course on multiple texts … another thing is a lot of those little paperback books don't last multiple users."
The bookstore also buys back the books students paid for after classes end for the semester. The university uses a book company called Wholesalers to conduct the buy-back, Meinel said.
"They purchase books for our bookstore if a professor has indicated they will be using it the next term," Meinel said. "We give 50 percent of the retail price of the book back to the student."
She said the bookstore usually marks-up the price to sell back to students for the next term.
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