In an effort to reduce textbook costs for students, the Hornet Bookstore Advisory Council is encouraging faculty to turn in textbook requests as early as possible to fight the rush for used textbooks.

The council is composed of Sac State faculty, bookstore staff members, University Enterprise Inc. representatives from Follett and student representatives. Anthony Sheppard, associate professor of recreation and leisure studies, is acting as the faculty consultant to the bookstore.

The council has been sending out letters to the faculty, informing them of the importance of early textbook adoption. The bookstore paid for an ad, written by Sheppard, in The State Hornet to inform students what was being sent to professors.

“The simplest and easiest way to lower the average cost of textbooks is to increase the percentage of used books available. However, every college bookstore is trying to do the same thing and it’s literally a race to buy used books from assorted wholesalers. This is why the Hornet Bookstore asks for your adoption so early,” read Sheppard’s letter.

Since the council began campaigning, the early textbook adoption rate is 25 percent higher than this time last year and the bookstore has acquired 60 percent more used books as well, Sheppard said.

A stigma the council is also working to remove is the image of the bookstore as the “bad guy,” Sheppard said. With purchasing used books, the books become property of the bookstore.

The bookstore runs the risk on used books because newer editions can’t be sent back to publishers for a full refund.

“(People) paint bookstores like the bad guys. If the bookstore were bad guys, they would just buy new books,” Sheppard said. “Buying used books benefit the students, it doesn’t help the bookstore.”

The Hornet Bookstore has even been holding back on buying used textbooks because the bookstore still wants to be able to purchase books back from the students.

“With one book buy back, two students benefit,” Sheppard said. “One student gets some of their money back and another student buys a book at a cheaper price.”

On Oct. 4, Sheppard and Director of Bookstore Services Julia Milardovich presented to Associated Students Inc. the steps the committee has taken.

Now is the time of year when faculty should be ordering, but very few of them do. They wait until closer to the start of the semester, Milardovich said at the meeting.

ASI Director of Undeclared Shelby Ornellas decided to make the bookstore her ASI board project for the semester and is planning to conduct a survey to gain and test the student and faculty’s knowledge of the campus bookstore.

With the council assisting Shelby, the goals of the survey are to help students understand why book prices are so high and to compare what students pay for textbooks to what faculty thinks students pay, Ornellas said.

But the survey project has not passed legislation by the ASI Board of Directors and Ornellas is acting only as an outside advisor to the Bookstore committee.

The ASI Board of Directors is also planning to propose to the Faculty Senate to have faculty put the book prices on their syllabi, but the legislation for the proposal has not passed.

Catherine Fraga, an English lecturer, was one of the faculty members to receive the letter by Sheppard and said ordering textbooks ahead of time is a good way to obtain more used editions.

But as a part-time faculty member, Fraga doesn’t know too far in advance what classes she will be teaching next semester and can’t place her textbook adoption that early.

“With more part-time faculty than full-time, who can take advantage of it?” Fraga said.

Fraga said she tries to keep the cost low for her students. Textbook editions are not crucial to Fraga and said newer editions have only a few additional readings and minor changes that are not important.

Everything the committee has done is intended to benefit the students, but with textbook industry geared to newer editions, Sheppard said, there are not too many ways to reduce the cost of textbooks besides used books.