Do any of you have the problem of there not being enough textbooks available
for students to buy from the campus bookstore at the start of a class?

Today was the first day of our Maymester in which we cover a semester in 11
days.  I assigned students the first three chapters in the book to be read
by tomorrow.  Within an hour students started telling me the bookstore did
not have the book.  It turned out that even though we had ordered the books
well in advance, and sent the bookstore correspondence three weeks ago about
the exact enrollment in the course (44 students), the bookstore only ordered
20 books, because they said they did not know how many students would
actually buy the book from them.  No more books are available until some
time on Wednesday.  That means that more than half the class will be without
books for the equivalent of three weeks of class.  Their first test is next
Monday over half the book.  This is apparently not the first time this
problem has occurred, although this is the first time I have encountered it
in an accelerated course.

My question is, have any of you run into this sort of problem?  If so, how
did you handle it with the bookstore and with the students?  I'm facing two
days of 3 1/2 hour classes with the students having no way to prepare.

Thanks.

Mary-Kathryn