The first two weeks of school mean spending large sums of money on textbooks.
While most students purchase their textbooks on campus at the University Textbook Store in the Bryan Center--as the recently massive crowds indicate--local independent competition from the Regulator Bookshop on Ninth Street and booksellers on the Internet challenge the Textbook Store's superiority.
The Regulator has developed a relationship with many Duke professors, said Randy Campbell, the store's manager.
Associate Professor of Women's Studies Kathy Rudy has ordered textbooks for her classes from the Regulator for over 10 years.
"The Regulator is a long standing progressive bookstore and has been an institution in Durham for at least 20 years," Rudy said. "[Ordering textbooks] is a really good way to support them."
Assistant Professor of Philosophy Andrew Janiak also said he orders from the Regulator in order to give it support. He said he began to order from the Regulator last year--his first year at Duke--due to its position as a community bookseller. He said he sought them out, and lamented that the Regulator does not advertise its services to professors.
The desire to patronize independent bookstores is not restricted to professors. Sophomore Larissa Goodwin said she sees the Regulator as more than just a place to buy textbooks.
"The Regulator is a great bookstore," she said. "It offers a lot of resources to students that they might not know about if their professor hadn't sent them there to buy books."
Based on his experience, Janiak said he had not heard dissent from students. "Because it is centrally located, none of my students mind going there," Janiak said. "They are perfectly happy to go there as opposed to the Textbook Store."
Such sentiments, however, are not shared by all students.
"I found it to be pretty inconvenient when I was a freshman," sophomore Donny Platner said. "As an upperclassman I would find it even more inconvenient, since the bookstore is located off of East." While some students and professors value shopping at an independent bookstore like the Regulator, other students are simply trying to find the best deal on their textbooks. Bob Walker, manager of the Textbook Store, and Campbell of the Regulator, said both stores have little advantage over the other. Instead, for students eyeing their pocketbooks, the Internet has become a new outlet for savings. Junior Mary McKee found ordering a textbook online to be preferable to purchasing it at the Textbook Store.
"[The book] was cheaper than it was at the bookstore. It came fast
and was easy," she said. Despite the competition, Walker said aside from normal fluctuations from semester to semester, he had not observed a change in sales due to the competition.
"I don't think there has been a decline in sales volume," Walker said. "Books ordered through other stores are often very low priced trade books or novels."
Despite the little effect on sales, Walker pointed to other drawbacks of using outside booksellers, including students not being able to buy books for all of their classes at the same time, as well as the ability to buy books using their FLEX accounts.
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