Buying and selling used books through the First Class Bookstore has saved students over $1.3 million dollars in just over five years.

The store is promoting the cause with its ‘Million Dollar March’, which estimates savings by adding half of the price of the used book sales to the total amount the bookstore pays when it buys back the books.

If the book is in demand, the store will buy back the book at half the price it is currently marked.

So, for easy math, if the used book was valued at $100 new, the bookstore will pay $50 for the book and resell it for $67.

If they do not need a particular used book, it may be bought by the store’s used book partner, Follett Higher Education Group.

However, the re-sell rate usually ranges between 15 to 30 per cent of the new price.

“If they’re not getting 50 per cent, you can hold on to that book and try to sell it again later when we might need it,” said Larry Cavanagh, book department supervisor at the First Class Bookstore.

Cavanagh said that when there is a surplus of a particular book, they sometimes have to lower the buy-back price, but recommends to wait a couple of days, as they might need a few extra copies, wait until the following semester, as demands for certain textbooks change, or sell it through the Student Association.

“If we buy something that does not sell, the college loses money,” wrote Cavanagh in an e-mail after the interview.

“I put a limit on how many we are going to buy.”

The bookstore began buying back used books in March 2001, saving students over $20,000 in its first year, but most of the books were bought back by Follett.

“There was a huge demand for used books,” said Cavanagh.

“We could have sold more if we had more inventory.”

The buy backs take place every Wednesday between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. and there is also a two-to-three week blitz that starts at the beginning of each semester, where students can sell their used books any weekday for two weeks.

Bill Armstrong, who has worked for the bookstore for three years, said that they “bought back close to 270 transactions the week before Christmas break and bought back between 250 and 300 books a day” during their two week blitz at the beginning of January, when they handed back more than $65,000 to students.

Adam Van Biert, a second-year police foundations student, said he heard about the buy-back program only a few weeks ago.

“I’m going to put the money towards the new books I need to buy for this semester,” said Van Biert.

Joseph Prodonick, who is a textbook information clerk at the bookstore, said that the demand for used books is high.

“Everybody asks for used,” said Prodonick. “If they don’t need anything specific like a cd, they’ll try and get it used.”

Students can also donate their books to Books for Africa, an organization that the bookstore supports through a company called Better World Books.