Bookstore Priorities
Redacted for Privacy, Amusement and Edification
Hello Professor Ancarett,
We would like to inform you that we have 2 copies remaining of $27.95 Popular Microhistory You Adopted for a Course Last Year with a Hundred Students.
Unfortunately, the publisher does not accept any returns. Please make note of this for any other order and kindly try to readopt this title in the future.
Thanking you for your cooperation,
Bookstore Staff Member
Two copies. Two WHOLE copies unsold. Whoa! I am a bad professor, aren’t I? Obviously, next year when I teach said course again I should adopt the same book, enabling the bookstore to order a hundred new copies and have one or two unsold ones sitting around to guilt me in the following cycle. Or not. For pedagogical reasons, I change microhistories each time I teach the course to give everyone something new to tackle (this also reduces the amount of recycled essays and other plagiarism offenses). But, obviously, I’m not looking at this from the correct perspective.
Or not!
November 7th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Perhaps you should apologize sweetly to the bookstore manager and tell him/her that in order to prevent this problem in the future, you will not turn in a book order but instead direct your students to Amazon.com to purchase their books…
November 7th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Excellent idea! I actually do make the book list (complete with ISBNs) available to students as early as possible. Since so many of them want to get a head start on their reading before term and the bookstore is slow to stock up, it only seems fair.
November 8th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Why, yes, use the book again. Maybe next time 4 will be left over!
November 8th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
I second the amazon.com deal. And I agree that you should thank the bookstore for making their priorities so explicit!
November 8th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
See, I always told you not to use books! They lead to all kinds of problems - students even expect you to read the book to them. That was why I usually did not have textbooks. But that was ancient history - whoops I mean materials science.
November 9th, 2006 at 12:58 am
Hey wait a minute. Did none of you guys consider - how many students were actually in your course? Only 98 at the beginning or was that 98 at the end. So, those 2 books might be returns. Or, did you have more than 98 enrolled? Maybe the reason they have left overs is due to students getting them at Amazon.com? Or do students try to save money and share texts?
I suggest getting the data on student enrollment together and seeing how that jives with what the bookstore gave you.
November 15th, 2006 at 11:23 am
[…] Textbook Evaluator muses over constructivism and textbook design. Speaking of textbooks, I’m still bemused over our bookstore’s priorities. […]