Negotiating

Being a student I have learned to despise the bookstore. They make you pay a ridiculous price for textbooks, and then buy them back at supposedly half price the original. That is, of course, as long as the professor doesn't decide to make a couple bucks by printing a new edition of the book, making your newly bought book obsolete at the end of the semester. Moral of the story, I have since decided to not sell my books back to the bookstore, because I don't like feeling cheated. Luckily, my major is such that it is more a community than a competition, even though our classes are competitive in that only a predetermined number of students get each grade. I really enjoy the feel of this community and it is a common thing to sell your books to a friend, or even just trade or lend.
The beginning of this semester was not unlike others in that I once again found myself dealing with my friends trying to get rid of my old books. Last week I talked to an acquaintance, I say acquaintance because of the following post, about selling some books and we agreed on a price for some books. I was selling them for how much I had bought them and felt it was a really good deal for both of us. I would get more than the bookstore would give me and he would pay significantly less. All last week we had a hard time getting together and I lugged the heavy books with me to school everyday fruitlessly. Finally today this acquaintance came to my house to buy the books and when I gave them to him he asked if he could pay twenty dollars less. I was pretty mad because I'm not some street vendor in a third world country and felt that the deal I had given him was fair. We haggled for a bit and I saw that there was no way I would get my original price, so I settled for ten bucks less than our original agreement.
I admit I'm not an experienced negotiator, and that I could have done better, but for me that is besides the point. I felt really taken advantage of because I considered this guy a friend, and I wasn't trying to cheat him. I don't have a problem with negotiating with people, it is a part of life, but I do have a problem with people taking a fair deal and trying to squeeze whatever they can get from me. I sold him the books for less than I wanted because I wanted to help him out and it wasn't worth the ten bucks to try and find another person, but it really rubbed me wrong that he would do it. The moral of this story is that I needed to write something for this week for class and that I felt blowing off steam was an appropriate post. Hopefully you learned something from my experience, since all I learned is that I'm never selling my books to that guy again.