How and why we buy

So, tomorrow's a big day around here. Textbook adoption deadline. What does that mean exactly? Tomorrow is the deadline for all book information for summer and fall book orders to come in to the store. We start working on that information as quickly as we can...for several reasons.

The first reason is so we can beat other college bookstores to used books that are in stock at different wholesale companies across the country. These are first-come, first-serve. If we can get them now, we can even have them held until we need them for fall, and that means we'll have more used books for students to buy instead of them having to buy new.

Just as important as the first reason is our desire to buy back every single book from students that we can. Plain and simple, if we don't have an order for that book, we can't buy it back for the store. It may get bought back by the national wholesaler that buys with us, but those prices don't compare with the prices we pay for books that are going to be resold at the store.

Third, we start building our buyback list. From this point forward, we add books daily to buy from students. Many students begin checking early on our website (aubookstore.com) to see what they can get for their books. As we get that information processed, that list grows to the nearly 1,000 titles that will be lsited by finals.

We are lucky at Auburn. Most of our faculty are conscientious about getting us their textbook information. Those that don't usually can't....they haven't been assigned their classes yet. That being said, we still have work to do on getting the forgetful faculty member or the uninformed faculty member on board. But we're working hard through several different channels to improve those situations.

Coming soon are the standards of the Higher Education Opportunity Act passed last August. Book information is intended to accompany choices students make when registering for their next semester's classes. We already post information to our website as soon as it is turned in to us. This law will make it all the more important that faculty are timely in getting their orders to us and that we process it quickly.

Eggs In The Nude

Hmm. A naked egg...apparently it is completely possible to de-shell a raw egg and have it maintain its egg shape. All it takes is 48 hours, a bowl, a refrigerator, a coffee cup, some corn syrup and some vinegar. It’s also possible to start a fire with a block of ice, make moth balls (the closet kind not the moth kind) dance and construct a giant air cannon from some flour and a cardboard box. And this has what to do with your college bookstore?

Oh yeah - we’re having a children’s book sale. These are all experiments from, The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science, which is now 40% off. Not that you’d see this book on the sale table – it made its way into the hands of our dangerously interested staff several days ago and has yet to make its return to the children’s section. We carry tons of science books, but this one contains information that’s valuable and relevant to our lives – like how to grow a Frankenstein hand, turn milk to stone and make a potato gun. It also has the scientific explanation after every experiment - so we are actually learning stuff in addition to standing around giggling and saying “Nice!”.

You can find The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science , as well as lots of other age inappropriate books to enjoy, at 40% off from now until Friday April 3, 2009, at the AU Bookstore. Heck, you could even buy some books for an actual child, if you know one. You might have to ask for the science book though, or just follow the snickering to the basement where you’ll find us dropping Mentos into 2 liters of Coke.