Textbook Brokers, a haven of affordable textbooks for all of us struggling college students who must buy aggressively priced books for class… is completely and permanently closed.
This is a big problem as there are no other options for textbooks in town other than the University Center (UC) Bookstore. Because of this, it is always packed and stressful to figure out in the first few weeks of every semester. Everyone here at CMU that I know always went to Textbook Brokers because of its convenience, fair prices and the owner’s kindness.
The store has been here in town since 1997 with the goal of providing affordable textbooks to college students, as many of the books you will buy at the Bookstore are much more expensive than the same exact book would have been at Textbook Brokers. While the exact nature of its closure is unsure, we know that it is a tentative closure and there is hope for student salvation.
The great thing about Textbook Brokers was you could rent your books for the semester and even set up payment plans on them so you didn’t have to pay the full price all at once before you are able to use your required book for class. The services they provided have helped thousands of college students and it seems very unfair to take that opportunity away.
After we made contact with the general manager of Textbook Brokers, it became much clearer why everything went wrong. CMU is trying to make the transition to Direct Digital codes over physical textbooks. In theory, they no longer need to sell off textbooks for $250, but rather want to sell codes for $100-150 for an online book; however, many majors are still using exclusively physical books.
The closing of Textbook Brokers was a financial maneuver for the school to increase revenue while not having to let go of expensive textbooks they will end up having to restock. This is a negative thing for us students as it is more unnecessary money we will have to be paying to keep going to classes.
Textbook Brokers is a nationwide company so they can capitalize off of their rental business model in any college town they would like to and find success, however it is unfortunate that we’ve lost this one in such a convenient spot.
There are no clear-cut solutions for more affordable textbooks at the moment besides a possible change to how things work at the University Center bookstore. For now we can hope that Textbook Brokers makes a return someday soon and we are able to shop there once again.
