Shame on you, Harvard Coop
Come on, Harvard Coop. Don't you make ENOUGH MONEY? Since Wordsworth closed, you practically have monopoly on new books in the heart of the square, an ACTUAL monopoly on stupidly expensive text books for ALL of Harvard University, and you probably pay your employees minimum retail wage. You don't discount, you probably buy text books back at an obscenely reduced rate then resell them at an obscenely high used book rate, and you have a fucking coffee shop up there, which is probably doing a pretty brisk business...
How greedy can you get? I realize the normal mark-up on a book is low (I worked in bookstores for most of my retail years, so I'm not naive), but not allowing students to do some research and find alternatives to paying through the nose for a book they'll use one semester? Since when is a book's ISBN number the intellectual property of a bookstore? Answer: IT NEVER WAS and NEVER WILL BE.
A book's ISBN number is Public Domain, baby. Get over yourselves.
How greedy can you get? I realize the normal mark-up on a book is low (I worked in bookstores for most of my retail years, so I'm not naive), but not allowing students to do some research and find alternatives to paying through the nose for a book they'll use one semester? Since when is a book's ISBN number the intellectual property of a bookstore? Answer: IT NEVER WAS and NEVER WILL BE.
A book's ISBN number is Public Domain, baby. Get over yourselves.
posted by Andraste at 9:55 AM
6 Comments:
Well said, and a happy ginger day to you.
Thanks, Cat. Happy weekend!
You drinking yet?
I've got 4 hours to go. Tick bloody tock!
I've been on the ale since eight in the PM. Tick bloody tock indeed.
Why didn't the students just ask the professors for the ISBNs? It would have saved them time in the bookstore.
That's a good question, Mike. Also, if you have the title, author, and edition number, which IS on the syllabus, you can just look it up on Amazon and the ISBN is right there.
The point, though, is that the bookstore doesn't own the ISBN numbers. If they're on the internet, and on the back of the book, and in any library's card file, etc., what right do they have telling anyone they can't write it down?
Was looking for horse supplies, but got horse '*ss' instead. Nice blog though...:) Discount Horse Supplies
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