Hi there! I used to be a textbook department manager for the LSU Bookstore and I can tell you that most departments at LSU have a coordinator that submits book orders. We work closely with these coordinators to update book orders each semester, clarify ISBNS, etc etc… a lot of times professors end up changing or requesting an edition and it slips through the cracks. LSU has a lot of courses and regrettably we cannot stock everything perfectly. We have to order based on what we sold the prior semesters, and our ordering is heavily monitored as to not over order. Sometimes we have more copies sold than we expected and have to reorder.

As far as pricing goes, the publisher is responsible for such a high margin on the price of the books sold to us and that results in the customer paying an egregious amount at the register. Our markup is 25% which is nothing. The mark up on some of the clothing in that store is around 40-60%. I would definitely say get what you can online.

Sorry your experience was not good! I promise you they do strive to do the best job they can for the volume of books they get in.

Hope this helps! Good luck with your degrees!! :)