General Questions:

When is the Campus Store open?

The Campus Store is open from 8:00 am -5:00 pm Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 8:00 am - 7:00 pm on Tuesday and Thursday, and 10:00 am - 2:00 pm Saturday (We are closed Saturdays in June, July and August )

Where is Calvin College Campus Store located?

The Campus Store is on the first floor of the Commons building near the middle of the campus. For more detailed directions, visit our directions page.

What methods of payment does the Campus Store accept?

We accept cash, checks, and credit cards in the form of Mastercard, Visa, and Discover. We also sell gift certificates for use in the store. Students can charge Campus Store purchases to their miscellaneous account.

How can I contact someone at the Campus Store?

You can call the Campus Store at (800) 748-0122, send an e-mail to campus-store@calvin.edu , or visit our contact page for more detailed information

Who can buy software at the Campus Store?

Students, Faculty, and Staff from any educational institution are able to purchase software from the Campus Store at an educational discount.

Textbook Questions:

How can I get my books?

•  The best way to get your books is to reserve them early and have the Campus Store collect, deliver, and charge your books to your miscellaneous account. To reserve your books, follow this link to textbook reservations .

•  The other option is to print your booklist online and come into the store where our textbook staff is available to help you find your books on the shelves. Your booklist will be available online approximately three weeks before classes begin and after you have registered.

What should I do if I cannot find my book?

Enrollment variations, publisher backorders and other natural calamities will occasionally cause us to run short of books. In these cases, we will rush order books for those students still in need. Please ask if you can't find the title you need since we don't automatically order out-of-stock books.

What is the textbook refund policy?

Full refunds of the purchase price are given on textbooks during the first week of classes (first three days for interim and summer sessions) If for any reason you don't need a book you have purchased, the book may be returned under the conditions listed below:

•  Returns must be accompanied by a current register receipt.

•  New books must be in mint condition.

What if I get a defective book?

Defective books will be replaced immediately. Both new and used books are guaranteed against defects, however, replacement of used books is subject to their availability. In cases where only new books are available, the customer will have to pay the difference in price between the new and used copies.

How much will my books cost?

Textbook prices vary widely depending on your major and year of study, but expect to pay anywhere between $300 and $450 per semester.

How can I save money on books?

The Campus Store does not have any choice about the titles or prices of books ordered for courses. We can, however, offer used books at substantial savings to students. The Campus Store actively seeks to obtain as many used books as possible, often by dealing with five or six national used book wholesalers. Remember that the best way to get more used books is to reserve your textbooks early through our textbook reservation system.

The best source of used books is still our own students. If you do not choose to keep a textbook as part of your permanent library, please consider selling it to the Campus Store during buy-back at the end of each semester so it can be recycled to another student looking for textbook savings.

Textbook Buy-Back Questions:

One phase of the textbook operation that puzzles many students is Book buy-back. Understanding the buy-back process will take some of the mystery out of it. Calvin College Campus Store makes every effort to assure students of the highest possible payment for used books.

Why does the Campus Store offer a buy-back service?

There are two reasons: one is to establish a uniform method for students to dispose of texts no longer needed or wanted; the other is to obtain a supply of required books that can be re-sold to students at the lowest possible price. Although we aggressively shop the used book wholesalers, our best source of used books is still our own students.

When is buy-back?

Book buy-back is held near the end of each semester or session, and during the first week of fall and spring semester.

Do I need my sales receipt to sell books?

No. While a receipt is needed to return books for a refund at the beginning of the semester, you do not need a receipt to sell books at buy-back. The only thing you need to bring to buy-back is your student ID card.

How does the Campus Store determine which books to buy?

The selection of textbooks is always the responsibility of the individual instructor. As textbooks are adopted by the faculty for use in a coming semester, we compile a list of books that will be reused. Complete information is not always available at buy-back time due to changes in faculty, class assignments and textbook determinations on the part of instructors.

Next, based on class enrollments and existing book inventories, our textbook coordinator determines the quantity of each book which can be purchased at buy-back. Books not needed by the Campus Store are purchased by the used-book wholesaler who makes them available to other college stores around the country.

Why are some books worth so much more than others?

The best price is always paid for books needed by the Campus Store for the coming semester. If your book is in reasonable condition and has been adopted by a faculty member for use in the coming semester, the Campus Store will pay you 50% of the new price for the book, provided we are not already overstocked on that title.

There are several factors that can prevent a book from being purchased at the higher Campus Store price. Some of them are:

• The professor who last used the book has not yet submitted a book order, so we don't know if this book will be reused.
• The professor has chosen to reuse the book, but it has gone into a new edition. Once a new edition has been published, all older editions are of no value in the used-book market; even the used-book wholesaler will not buy it.
• The book is not being used the following semester at Calvin. This can be due to several factors:
  1) The professor who last used the book has replaced it with a different title.
  2) The book was last used for a course that is not being offered the coming semester. In this case, if your book is of fairly current copyright, you may wish to hold it and try the next buy-back.
• In some cases, there are limits to the quantity of books the Campus Store needs of a certain title. Once the Campus Store has reached its quota of such a book, we can offer only the "wholesale" value, i.e. the price the wholesaler will pay for that book. If, for example, the Campus Store needs only 50 copies of Myers: PSYCHOLOGY, we will pay 50% of the purchase price for the first 50 books we buy. Any books purchased after that will be purchased for the wholesale market at the wholesale price.

If books are not needed on Calvin's campus for the coming semester, it may still be possible to sell them through the Campus Store to a used-book wholesaler. This is a special service we offer to students who wish to sell their books even though we can't buy them at the higher price. Value of such books is determined by national demand and current marketability. Wholesale companies typically pay between 10% and 30% of the new book price for current editions of textbooks they can resell to other colleges and universities.

Why do the wholesalers only pay 10-30% for textbooks?

Used-book wholesalers base the price they will pay for a book on their perceived "marketability" of that particular book. Many risk factors enter into the value of a book, such as the age of its edition and the book's demand on other campuses. In addition, wholesale companies must take into account the costs of shipping books to a central warehouse, processing them for resale, then selling and shipping them (hopefully) to other campuses at a low enough price that they will be competitive with new books.

Used-book wholesalers play a vital role in the college textbook market by recycling books not needed on one campus to other campuses needing the books. At the same time, they offer cash to students wanting to sell unneeded or unwanted books, while making possible substantial savings to students who purchase used books we have obtained through wholesalers. About 30% of the used books sold in our store come from used-book wholesalers, and we would buy more if we could.

Why not sell all my books right now no matter what the price?

This is certainly a common approach, and if you need the money now, it makes sense. With textbook values, however, timing is everything. The buy-back value of your book is based on need, and its value can go up or down depending on its use.

For books used on campus, it pays to sell early since titles with a buy-back limit are purchased on a first come, first served basis. For titles purchased through a used-book wholesaler, however, prices change dramatically only when books change editions. If you have reason to believe that a current-edition textbook (copyright date only 1-2 years old) will be used sometime in the future even though it will not be used during the coming semester, you may wish to hold it for resale to the Campus Store at a later date rather than accept the lower wholesale price.

Why do some books have no market value to either the Campus Store or a used book wholesaler?

Below are listed some the most common reasons for a book to have no resale value:

• The book is an old edition. Once a book changes edition, professors all around the country want the new edition; even though that book may have been purchased new, it will have no resale value on the textbook market. The average life of a textbook is about three years. The closer a book gets to this point, the less wholesale value it has. In general it is best to sell your books as soon as possible after you have determined you no longer need or want them.
• The book is in unsalable condition. Examples would include books with lost, torn or illegible covers, water damage, missing pages, contents separated from covers, loose bindings, excessive highlighting or excessive cribbing which would make the book useless to the next person who buys it (e.g. a foreign language book with every translation written in). Books that have deteriorated to an unsalable condition cannot be bought back.
• The book is consumable/expendable. In general, we do not buy back workbooks, lab manuals, study guides, books with perforated (tear-out) pages. Other examples include books with filled-in pages that cannot be re-used (e.g. accounting worksheets); material that is constantly updated (e.g. Federal Tax Codes and Annual Edition titles), most loose leaf notebooks, locally produced materials and custom-published books of readings that change every semester.
• The book is a "bestseller" or a religious title. Ironically what these two categories have in common is a weak resale value in the national college market. Current or even older "trade" titles may not even be listed in the Buying Guide. Titles of a parochial religious nature are not used in enough schools across the country to warrant purchase by the used book wholesalers.

Anything else I should know about buy-back?

We can't give specific buy-back information over the phone. Only the textbook buyers at the window have the updated information necessary to give the right answers.

Books don't have to be coddled. To sell them they must be in reasonably good condition, but we do not mean that you must be so protective of your books that you can't enjoy them...get the best use out of them. Underline some passages if that helps you understand and remember. To us, and to most students, this does not constitute deterioration. We'll still pay the fair market value for your book if you've taken decent care of it.

Finally, there is never a guarantee that textbooks you purchase will be used again by any instructor anywhere in the country. Textbooks are a learning tool, and hopefully, valuable to your education. You should not buy books with the expectation of reselling every one -- that happens in very few cases.

What can I do to recycle my no-value books?