Editor, Daily Nexus,

Recently we opened up the Daily Nexus and found out, to our shock and surprise, that we here at UCSB are being overcharged at the bookstore! Being third-years with ridiculous amounts of experience in the field of buying textbooks, we thought it would look good as community service on our résumés if we imparted knowledge back to the college community from which we have taken so much. So to everyone who has not read the article or been to the bookstore to buy books, the prices at the bookstore suck!

The problem is that CalPIRG is wasting time and money on researching something that everyone already knows about. What it really needs to do is support a solution that works. Unfortunately, there has been little to no progress and we foresee none in the future. The American Association of Publishers will continue to quote random statistics in its favor to counter whatever new study CalPIRG releases, and then students will graduate in four years with the situation remaining the same.

So what are we to do? The answer can be found on the Internet. There is a multitude of online sites to buy and sell books for better prices than the bookstore. Our personal recommendation is amazon.com, just because it is pretty easy to use and has a large selection. Seriously though, selling a book to the bookstore for $15 is such a rip-off, compared to selling it online for $60 or $70. Also, if you are ordering books, you have to do it before the quarter starts, which requires an amount of foresight. Do we even have to mention how much cheaper used books online are, compared to buying them from the bookstore? Next time you are perusing Internet porn, log on to amazon.com and look up the books you have now by the SKU number and see how much you could have saved. In summary, the bookstore sucks; you get to buy cheaper books online and sell them for more when you are done. If you want more, you are living in a fantasy land filled with milk and honey. And milk is delicious, so send us a postcard.

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