Course Texts – For Instructors
UPB is a convenient place to order course texts for small upper-division classes and graduate seminars. Students can avoid long lines at the textbook stores, and by choosing UPB you will be supporting a longstanding and unique Berkeley institution. If you’d like to order course texts from us, here’s what you need to know:
Since we are not primarily a textbook store, we do not automatically get class reading lists. We order books for classes only when specifically requested by instructors. (Note that our regular stock usually consists of just one or two copies of a given title; often professors send students to us because they know we carry a particular book, but unless they have asked us to stock it for their class, we will run out of copies almost immediately.) We have accounts with approximately 100 scholarly presses and selected other presses, and we order most books directly from the publishers. It takes three weeks on average for ordered books to arrive at the store. We must receive your book list at least three weeks before the beginning of class. You can email us, call, or come in to place an order. We will always contact you to acknowledge receipt of email requests.
NEW Fall 2011: We are starting to carry Odin Readers for selected classes as well. Also, after experimenting for a year we have decided not to offer a textbook rental service at this time (low student use of the service did not justify a labor-intensive process).
Each semester, the classes and books that we are carrying are listed on the “Course Texts – For Students” page of our website. Book availability is updated periodically through the semester.