> From: Elaine -HFB- Ashton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> You haven't been to a modern college campus bookstore recently have you?
> Barnes and Nobel *is* the campus bookstore in a lot of places and they
buy
> back 95% of the course books, even trade as the professors may use them
> over the course of a year or two.
I agree--if a trade book is sold as a text, the book stores will buy them
back--and this includes trade books bought at one school as tutorial aids
which are used as texts at other schools.
(Let me make certain we're on the same page--when I say a tutorial aid, I
mean a book like perhaps a Nutshell book--either sort--which is not being
assigned as a text [and, in fact, is almost certainly unsuitable for use as
a primary textbook] but which is purchased by the choice of the student as
an aid to studying the material in the text.)
However, top dollar is paid for books being used as textbooks, at the same
school, in the subsequent semester. Considerably lower amounts are paid for
trade books than for textbooks, and lower amounts still for trade books not
used as texts at that school. Students are generally aware of this price
structure, and make purchases accordingly--if they buy a tutorial aid, they
know they're likely to keep it.
> I don't know many hard core language textbooks these days...almost all of
them are trade.
I only know the ones used locally--you may in fact be right is saying that
I haven't been in _enough_ college book stores lately--but I've noticed
quite a few programming text (as opposed to trade) books.
I do have the one data point of a text that I bought this spring--I had an
outstanding requirement for my math degree which I decided to fulfill with
a C++ class, as I'd never learned the language--and this book, _C++ How to
Program_, by Deitel and Deitel, certainly appears to be a text book. That
_is_ only the one book, however, so I'm certainly going to go into more
stores and do a little reality check.
John A
