Friday, October 17, 1997
Discrepancies between prices common at UCLA book stores
TEXTBOOKS: Used tomes an option; ASUCLA tries to ensure
consistency
By Steven Tanamachi
Daily Bruin Contributor
You can’t judge a book’s price by its back cover. Especially in
UCLA’s student store.
The ASUCLA-run Bookzone and Textbook departments often finagle
with the preprinted publishers’ prices, offering sales and
discounts. Often, prices end up different between the two
stores.
Though the university often takes the heat for high prices,
bookstores are often at the mercy of the publishers.
"Bookstores have little or nothing to do with pricing," said Don
Leidiger, an employee for Bodhi Bookstore in West Hollywood.
Prices are determined by the publisher, and the bookseller
purchases books from them for 60 percent of the cover price,
according to Leidiger.
So on a lucky day, students may be a flight of stairs away from
a cheaper price.
UCLA has a policy stating that a new book sold in different
places on campus are to have the same price.
Though ASUCLA can’t prevent the publisher’s charge from rising,
there is a markup for new books.
"We price the same for all books in our stores," said Jacques
Freydont, the Academic Support general manager of ASUCLA, "except
we discount books in the Bookzone and not in Textbooks, and the
reason is that Bookzone is a different industry."
"Moby Dick being sold in Bookzone generally has different
competition than Moby Dick being sold in Textbooks," he said.
A random sampling, however, showed that students may even be a
flight of stairs away from a cheaper price.
The discrepancy between UCLA’s Bookzone and Textbooks is either
because of Bookzone discounts (whereas no discounts are given in
Textbooks) or because of the pricing still being in process,
according to Freydont.
"When you’re dealing with this many books and when you’ve got
the turnover of 105,000 titles down in Bookzone and use 3,500 books
up here (in Textbooks( that you turn over every 10 weeks, things
get through," said Freydont.
"So if you see things like that you’ve caught an error, not an
intention – unless, of course, it’s discounted," Freydont said.
In accordance with UCLA’s confidentiality policy, Freydont would
not comment on the markup of UCLA’s prices from the publisher’s
preprinted price.
Despite the lack of power in pricing new books, UCLA has come up
with an alternative. While the high prices of new books may be a
pain in the back pocket, used books in good condition sold in the
Textbooks store are often the college student’s panacea to
inflating text costs.
"We can’t prevent prices of books from going up," said Freydont.
"What we can do, and for years have tried to do, is to have an
aggressive used book program because used books save the student 25
percent."
Freydont expressed pride in his work, having saved the UCLA
student body a reported $1.2 million last year by creating this
"recycling program."
Along with this service, the student association has also cut
the cost of Academic Publishing material by 15 percent to appease
the student body’s demand for lower prices.
Along with selling used books, ASUCLA buys back books as well,
reportedly having dished out $1.4 million to students last
year.
"I don’t know how many organizations are saving students that
much money in required educational costs," said Freydont.
The prices of the used books upstairs still beat the discounts
and mismarkings at Bookzone.
Though the new and used appear similar, they are worlds apart to
the consumer, with the used books generally being sold before the
new ones are touched.
"There’s not much of a difference between new and used. A book’s
a book," said Matt Low, a second-year physiological science
student.
"The gap between the prices is pretty big, and I don’t like
buying a new book when I can buy a used one – especially if I’m
only using it for a quarter," Low said.
Used books are discounted 25 percent from the new book price.
This is a standard marketing procedure around the nation, according
to Freydont. But others feel that other stores give them more
freedom.
When reselling at other used books stores, the bookholder often
gauges a used book’s value, said Leidiger.
Not only does ASUCLA buy back books to be used the next quarter,
it also buys books to be used at other institutions.
"If I’m not using this book this year, maybe West Point is.
We’ll buy this book and sell it to the wholesaler, and that
wholesaler will turn around and sell it to West Point," Freydont
said.
In the battle of new against used, the broken-in books seem to
have the upper hand in many college students’ perspective.
The fresh scent of new paper in new books is being overmatched
by the weight of the bills in students’ wallets, saved from buying
used.
Like many other students, Low’s perspective on his books is
simple: "If the pages are there, that’s good enough for me."MICHAEL
ROSS WACHT
Second-year student Diana Boriboon works at the ASUCLA Textbook
store, which sometimes charges more for books than the
Bookzone.