WSU's Marwil Bookstore to Close

[Detroitnerd]

Welcome to bizarro world, the land of twisted words.

Better than your world of twisted minds. You just can't wait to get in a cheap shot, can you, young fella?

DP: The remarks in the first paragraph are about Wayne State University's development arm, not you. Not every nasty thing I say is aimed at you.

[downtownguy]

B&N charges similar prices, but faculty are persuaded to order through B&N opposed to Marwil.

How? Why?

[NoHeartAnthony]

I did find Marwell somewhat rude and disinterested the few times I went in there. I was like to myself 'what business in Michigan much less Detroit can afford to have this attitude...?'. I stopped going.

This is true. I felt the same way. You have to look at the other side of the equation, students buying textbooks aren't the most... kind customers of all time. I'm not sure if that excuses their attitude inside.

[NoHeartAnthony]

How? Why?

In my experience, your liberal artsy classes will order from Marwil. The money grabbers, the pre-med/engineering/anything a freshman must take... all order from B&N. Or they strongly suggest you get your books there.

Logical conclusion leads me to believe that the school [[big departments mostly - chemistry, biology, engineering) is in partnership with B&N, while Marwil is independent. The departments that don't matter and have less red tape, they can order freely.

What really needs to take hold is some sort of official student book exchange. Buy back books for more than what the bookstores accept and sell the used ones for less than what they sell them for. There's facebook groups and such, but it's not out in the open. A sham if you ask me.

[noise]

The problem of costs rests almost solely on the publishers.

The academy takes blame for not revamping promotion & tenure to value non-traditional publishing models.

[NoHeartAnthony]

What I don't get is the insistence on having you order the newest edition... when the class will cover the same basic material from year to year.

[Gistok]

When you tell people that you value the green space, all while keeping ambitious development plans at the ready, you are kind of a liar, at least a hypocrite, and certainly are giving people reason to guess that you may be completely full of shit about anything in the future.

That you have no problem with that doesn't surprise me much.

I would think that any company or entity would show themselves as being total morons by putting all their cards on the table for spelling out the future development plans of a site that they are attempting to acquire. Why would you expect anyone to do that? So that we armchair folks can know what to expect?

Doesn't the fiasco that was the Detroit Rivertown district ring a bell when the entire area was ruined because the city said in advance that they wanted to buy up the area to build a casino district? Not only did the speculators and landowners with visions of $$$ come out of the woodwork... but a dozen years later the area still has not recovered because of the truth that was mentioned beforehand in announcing the acquisition of the land.

I look at a similar scenario in the largest prime parcel of land in the Grosse Pointes... in the Farms... where the former Sears/Hughes Hatcher/Kroger site [[along with the removal of 8 homes along Moross) sits cleared with pine trees planted, probably awaiting the acquisition of the rest of the block. They are only announcing it as green space, because any major multi-million dollar project that will likely go there, will just drive up the price on the remaining parcels/buildings if the plans are first announced.

Business/entity owners generally don't announce large projects intended for specific sites.... until they HAVE ACQUIRED ALL THE LAND. They generally just label them as "green spaces" or lesser uses... to keep land prices and speculation down [[at least attempt to).

So your feeling of being lied to is more of the "rule rather than the exception" in the greater scheme of things... after all "Business Ethics" IS an oxymoron.

[Zug]

What I don't get is the insistence on having you order the newest edition... when the class will cover the same basic material from year to year.

For some fields, there are yearly changes [[fields with lots of research). There can be some advantage to having the latest editions. Plus, instructors get the books for free [[publishers actively push books on instructors)...and they often aren't aware of how much the books cost their students.

[kathy2trips]

I practically lived at Marwil's in the late 70s. RIP.

[wolverine]

Bookstores that sell textbooks are on life support. Certainly the small independent bookstores continue to do well with a niche market. But if the business model was counting on textbooks, you should have been out of business before Amazon got popular.