Re: Einar Cartaya's letter ("Readers respond to letter on bookstores 'manipulating' PSU students," Jan. 15).

Three comments come immediately to mind regarding Cartaya's questions about the Penn State Bookstore and its prices.

For starters, the computer list of books that can be printed at the bookstore is available several weeks before a semester begins. In other words, if you want to know what books you need in the spring, you can more than likely look them up in November. This should give you plenty of time to find other sources for books if it's that big of a deal.

Secondly, some professors don't submit their book lists to any of the bookstores by the deadline determined by each store. This normally leads to chaos, when the folks at the bookstore have to scramble at the last minute to pacify Lazy Professor X, who doesn't turn in a book list until two days before the start of the semester. That screws both the bookstore and the student.

Third, the Penn State Bookstore is owned by Barnes & Noble -- not PSU. If you have a complaint, good luck taking it to the largest book distributor in the world. In fact, every bookstore in town is a private, for-profit business. Price mark-up on a captive market is just another joy of capitalism that we all get to share together.

In the end, I don't blame any bookstores for unhappy students. I blame the students who can't look out for themselves and expect it all to be handed to them, professors who can't seem to be bothered with submitting booklists on time and the big conglomerates taking over the industry.

Griping at individual bookstores and the people who work there doesn't achieve anything.