Bookstores transitions make better deals for students
Valerie Ettenhofer
Staff Writer
The bookstore is the only place on campus that fills every type of student need, and come fall, you might notice some changes being made to it.
The bookstore has recently made the switch from an affiliateof Pierce College to a partnership with Barnes & Noble college booksellers.
The staff welcomes the changes, many of which will streamline the process of buying and renting textbooks.
Store manager Bobbie Koch is enthusiastic about providing new options to students who may have taken to comparison-shopping in years past.
“They’re still going to shop around, and that’s great, but we feel like we’re going to have what they need here,” Koch said.
“They’ll know what our policies are, they know we’re going to be here, and if there’s a problem they can come talk to us and we can figure it out,” Koch added.
One of the new policies is a rental opportunity that easily outdoes the old system.
Required course textbooks can get pricey, costing hundreds of dollars per quarter, but Barnes and Noble is offering every textbook for rent at half of the sale price.
It is as easy as picking up your books and taking them to the register, whereas online rentals in the past could take weeks to arrive.
There is still an online option for students who don’t need their supplies immediately. Piercebookstore.bncollege.com offers all of the services of the physical store, and has a quick and easy textbook search feature.
Barnes and Noble, which was chosen out of four interested groups and also entered into an agreement with the Puyallup campus, puts emphasis on emerging and popular technologies. Course textbooks are now available as e-books, often at a much lower price. is means that students who bring laptops to class no longer need to lug around physical copies of their books at all.
E-books are nonrefundable, but for the most part, their updated return policy is accommodating. Textbooks, returned in the same condition they were received and with a receipt, will be accepted with a guarantee full refund within thirty days of being purchased.
If students drop a class within the first month of school, their drop slip and receipt are a free pass for a refund as well. Students are also encouraged to make returns if a teacher switches textbooks sometime during the quarter.
Another advantage of the Barnes & Noble takeover is a frequent opportunity for students to cash in on old books.
“We have continuous buyback now, every day,” Koch said. “[The best prices] will still be at the end of the quarter because we’re buying books that we need, but any other time would be a wholesale buy,” Koch added.
Walking into the bookstore, one is bound to notice that snacks, Raider gear, and office supplies that are still available at the store, but everything seems a bit tidier.
There are five new registers constantly in use, and books are stacked neatly with new price labels. A standalone shelf displays new paperback bestsellers and reference books. Besides the posters, this is the only sign of Barnes & Noble’s presence.
One thing you won’t see changing anytime soon is the employees. “I was able to retain my full staff,” Koch said. “They’ve got a lot of years of knowledge. They know the books, they’ve been working so hard to get everything set up and ready, they have training and they’re just so excited,” Koch added.
If the bookstore staff is looking forward to the future, it’s with good reason. They have plans to extend hours, normally 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the weekdays, closing early at 3 p.m. on Fridays, during rush week, staying open two hours later every day.
Down the line, they plan to include new college gear and even offer student discounts at the Lakewood Towne Center Barnes & Noble.
“We’ll continue to add more titles to the rental program. The longer we’re with Barnes & Noble, the more titles will become available for rent,” Koch said.
