Advances in technology and procedure have revolutionized our society and pulled us out of the dark abyss of antiquity in almost every aspect of daily life. There are practices, however, that still plague us with their inconvenience, inefficiency, and incompetence. The process of purchasing textbooks, for example, is in dire need of further evolution. Though buying used textbooks online is a good way to avoid the anguish of paying full price, many times the process is just as painful.

For the most part my experiences with sites such as amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com have been positive; in a matter of minutes I’ve been able to locate the needed textbook for a twentieth of what it costs new and commence the new quarter. The organization and clever layout of the popular sites makes ordering books completely painless. For a brief moment we naive students dance our celebratory dances, ecstatically calculate our hundreds of dollars in savings, and aggressively put two figurative fingers up to the system with all the mutinous rebellion we can muster. But when our books have yet to arrive three weeks later, our camaraderie begins to dwindle and we look ashamedly to our hated nemesis: the bookstore.

It seems a step in the wrong direction to shop at the bookstore in light of our many options. The truth of the matter, however, is that textbooks are actually fairly priced, and campus bookstores only keep 4.5% of textbooks sales (after operating costs, personnel, and taxes have been paid). There is no big-business villain clutching a dollar-stamped bag to blame for the price of textbooks. “Academic books, especially specialized ones for graduate courses, have a lower sales volume than popular books, causing costs to be spread out over a smaller base number, thereby increasing a book's unit cost,” explains a statement recently released from the University of Cincinnati’s Department of University Relations.

Thus there is no easy fix to the problem of high textbook costs. Students have found ways to get creative, but any alternative method will have its pros and cons. No company can mass-distribute used goods for the low prices that individual sellers can, and unfortunately that is where the steals are found on sites such as amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com (buying books new from these sites provide the consumer with the dependability of a big seller, but is seldom much cheaper than the bookstore). Buying from an individual seller is cumbersome, and anyone who has ever dealt with Ebay will know that; few sellers are easy to get in contact with, professional, and prompt. The sellers that carry the texts students need are most often other students and therefore even less likely to execute an online transaction with professionalism. Orders are sometimes cancelled- as were three of mine this quarter- or delayed, and at times the savings made possible by this bothersome process are completely negated, especially if one has to hunt down and photocopy library copies to complete the first couple of assignments. Ordering textbooks a month ahead of time also has its disadvantages; if you’re anything like me and the other 20% of students who refuse to buy a text until reading has been assigned- nothing is more frustrating than dropping $60 on a book that the teacher never uses- then ordering books prematurely is not the most attractive option.

It seems as if whether we buy our books from the bookstore or order them online we will be left wrathfully swearing under our breath. As seamless as amazon.com may make the process seem, textbooks will continue to act as the vile bane of our existence for some time to come. Though tiresome the old adage may be, it certainly rings true in this case: “If it seems to good to be true, it probably is”.