On Friday afternoon, I noticed a stranger in the office suite. No one seemed alarmed, so I thought maybe he was expected. He wore slightly better clothing than our usual student visitors. A job candidate, perhaps? But surely not on a Friday afternoon, which is not a high traffic time on campus. A former department member? Maybe--but it would be going way back, because I hadn't heard of an older white man as a former department member.
In the end, he turned out to be a book buyer, the kind who goes from campus to campus, looking for old textbooks to buy. The business model used to be that he'd buy them for slightly more than one could get at the campus bookstore. Now campus bookstores have a much smaller footprint, and many college teachers are using online textbooks, open source material, or no text at all.
I'm a little surprised that there's enough of a market that someone would still put on their better clothes and trudge from building to building with a rolling suitcase for the books to be bought. But I'm also happy.
And yes, I realize all the reasons why this shadow economy is bad for book writers and students and textbook companies. But I'm also happy.
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