At the beginning and again at the end of the semester, "textbooks" becomes a four-letter word.

"For us to be paying as much as we are for tuition, I feel that  we should get cut a little slack," junior journalism major Amanda Noble said regarding the feelings of many students about  the semesterly cycle of buying and selling textbooks.

For many, it is unclear-- they see high prices and relatively low return on buyback.

"I really would like to have someone breakdown what each cost goes to contribute to the book  because I think it's ridiculous.  Even used textbooks are way overpriced," Noble continued.

According to Campus bookstore manager Catherine Murphy, it all starts with the publisher.

"They need to make the biggest bang for their buck on the front end," Murphy said. The publisher sets the price of a textbook based on the costs that go into making the book.

Some of those costs include “author royalties, paper, printing and binding, investments in editorial development and digital product development, marketing, instructor resources, and support materials, general and administrative costs, and freight costs,” Tom Stanton, director of communications for McGraw-Hill Education said.

“We raise and lower the prices of educational materials based on continuous monitoring and evaluation of the market environment,” he continued.

In recent years since the explosion of the used book market, publishers have been setting prices higher, knowing that they have one shot to try and make back their costs.

"I'm not sure, most of the time, that the books are worth what they're being charged, and you know, we have to pay a price, and then we have to offer the service of having them  all here, convenient for any student who needs to use financial aid," Murphy said.

She discussed the bookstore's methods in finding the best prices on books, as not to "hurt the students," or "rip them off."

"We would go to all the wholesalers and we send out what's called a Want List. They tell us all the different books they have, all the different wholesalers  and they tell us how much they are going to charge for it," Murphy explained.  Campus bookstore  associate manager/textbook manager Matt Reno makes his buying decision keeping in mind the lowest price and the number of books needed.

The bookstore sets their prices after factoring the publisher's cost, shipping and the price being offered elsewhere.

"We'll look at Amazon, we'll see if they're taking 5% off the top, then if we can afford to do that, then we'll do it," Murphy said. She also explained the limits that the bookstore falls under. With only 5600 potential customers, there's only so far they can go in terms of marking down books.

"We can't do what amazon can do because they sell everything to everybody in the world and if they want to mark a textbook  and lose ten or fifteen bucks on every single one of them, they've probably made a life-long purchaser. We can't compete with that," Murphy said.

The industry standard for textbook mark up is 20-25%. Murphy said that the bookstore does not necessarily follow that.  A markup is the amount of money added to the original price that results in profit.

Fast forward to the end of the semester, and students trying to figure out what their best option for selling back their textbooks will be.

The bookstore will buy back textbooks, but the prices depend on various factors like if the book new or used, purchased from a wholesaler initially or whether it will be used the next semester.

For example, a student selling a used textbook should get half of the price charged when it was new, but might not if the book will not be used again, or even if a professor has not turned in his adoption form by the time buyback starts.

According to Reno, quotas affect buyback prices as well.

"You can have a situation where a student comes in and gets x amount of dollars which is half the new price and then maybe the next day after another final or two, another person with the same book in a different section comes in and they get less and that's because we've bought what we need for the next semester," Reno said.

"You have the right to use your books for exams and not have to worry about selling them before the bookstore hits their quotas and drops their prices," so reads The "Bill of Buyback Rights," a recent post on the Bookfool.com blog, by minister of communication, Luke Duncan.

Bookfool is a Nashville-based independent book buyer and seller, founded in 2003 by Kris Lange when he was still a junior at University of Mississippi.

These days, Bookfool occupies a small warehouse in East Nashville and sets up shop during buyback at a variety of locations near universities, including Cosmic Connections, next to the Circle K on Portland. 

Duncan discussed Bookfool's approach to the textbook industry.

"BookFool's model is unique in that we cut out the wholesalers and middlemen altogether. We...buy our books directly from students, selling them on the national used market at the beginning of the next semester," Duncan said. He also made the point that Bookfool does not make price distinctions based on if a book will be used the following semester or not.

Duncan talked about the idea of "empowering" students. "Students are always free to compare prices online, at the bookstore, and elsewhere, and we welcome them back if they decide we can offer them the best deal."

In fact, entering an ISBN number on Bookfool's Web site pulls up standard book details, Bookfool's price and a list of prices from competitors.

"If we can't give you the best deal on a used book, we want to empower you find the best price yourself," Duncan said. "As students ourselves, we felt how powerless we were in the face of the mega-conglomerates who run campus bookstores.”

Murphy and Reno made similar comments.

“Both being graduates, both still paying student loans---” Murphy said “we're really here as a service and we do the very best we can.”