The Book Cycle
We want to help students get the most money back from their used books.
Our goal is to give you the best option to buy and sell books.
Around Campus Bookstore is the dream of 4 current and past students that were tired of paying high bookstore prices. They were sick of spending hundreds of dollars buying books to only receive a fraction of the amount in return when they sold them back to the bookstore. Why does the bookstore markup book prices 50-100%? Why doesn’t the school allow outside companies to compete for the business of their students? Why can’t I find class schedules and required texts, with ISBN numbers, online? The answers to the questions are simple, MONEY!
Let me explain the textbook market. It is broken 4 major sections: authors, publishers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers (the bookstore) and consumers (students). This is how the system really works:
- Really smart people (authors) spend a great deal of time studying, researching and writing to produce a text book.
- If they are lucky, they are able to find a publisher that will take a chance and take the debt of producing their book.
- Once the books are produced, publishers find distributors to sell the new book.
- When a deal is made, books are sent to distributors. Since they are the major player that connects manufacture to consumer, they take a big risk – storing shipping and handling returns of inventory.
- Distributors can sell directly to retailers (Bookstores), but they mostly sell in bulk to wholesalers. These wholesalers act as couriers and buffers on behalf of their clients in the retail industry.
- Retailers buy large orders from wholesalers and later put the book on shelves to be bought by consumers (you).
- A sale is made and both the bookstore and school get their cut of profit.
| ($100 New book and $80 used version) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st sale | 1st buy back & sale | 2nd buy back & sale | |||||
|
Entity
|
Profit %
|
$
|
Profit %
|
$
|
Profit %
|
$
|
|
|
Author
|
10
|
10
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
Publisher
|
35
|
35
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
Distributor
|
25
|
25
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
Wholesaler
|
10
|
10
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
|
Bookstore
|
20
|
20
|
70
|
56
|
75
|
60
|
|
|
Other Expenses
|
4
|
4
|
30
|
24
|
25
|
20
|
|
After so long, authors realize that some middleman is making all the money! (Publishers don’t count because they took the initial risk.) So what does the author do? They fix a few errors here and there, update some statistics, replace a chapter or two and release a NEW Edition. This causes the value of the OLD edition to plummet, and those holding copies are S.O.L. This new edition restarts the never-ending cycle that leaves the consumer (you) always paying more for less.