Why Are Textbooks So Expensive?

CampusBooks.com is here to save you money on textbooks so we are doing a three-part blog on the real reasons why textbooks cost so much—from three different points of view: a college professor and textbook author, the textbook publishers and the college bookstores.  We hope this information will help you understand the reasons textbooks are so expensive.

From an Author’s Standpoint

Henry L. Roediger III, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and a textbook author, wrote an article on high textbook prices for the Academic Observer.  According to Roediger, textbooks are more expensive because of the recent popularity of the used textbook market.  He cited the used textbook market as a problem not due to students selling to each other, but to the massive buying of textbooks by used book wholesalers who then ship the book to another campus where it will be used next year.  The textbook wholesalers, some of which own the bookstore, buy textbooks from students at a small fraction of the price that the students pay and then sell the books back to the next batch of students at an inflated “used book” price.  This cycle results in publishers and authors not getting fair payments for their work in producing the textbooks.  Roediger compared the practice to vendors who sell pirated music and do not pay royalties to record labels or artists.  The only difference, he pointed out, is that the used textbook industry is legal and music pirating is not.

Here is a concrete example that he provided:

His book, Experimental Psychology: Understanding Psychological Research, was published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. The bookstore pays the company $73.50 for the new book. The authors receive 15 percent royalties on the book, so the three authors split the $11 royalty, and the publisher gets the rest.   However, at the Washington University bookstore, the list price of the book is $99.75, a markup of $26.25 (or 35.7 percent).  The authors get $11.02 for their work whereas the bookstore makes $26.25 gross profit per book.

When a student sells his or her textbook at buyback, the bookstore buys it back at a greatly marked down price, somewhere between 25 and 50 percent. Let’s assume that Experimental Psychology is bought back for 40 percent of the new book price (which is a generous assumption). That buyback price would be $39.90. After buying it, the bookstore will mark it up dramatically and resell the book. Suppose the used book is sold by the store for $75, which sounds like a bargain relative to the new book price of $99.75.  The profit markup for the bookstore on this used book would be $35.10, which is even higher than the (still very large) profit made on the new book ($26.25). So on the second (and third and fourth, etc.) sales of the same book, the bookstore and used book company make large cumulative profits while the publishers and authors get no additional revenue.

According to Roediger, textbook publishers have little options when dealing with the loss in profits.  They are forced to raise the prices of textbooks in an attempt to recuperate their initial investment.  Publishers revise books often because they want to make sure book profits will accrue to the publisher and author, not the bookstores.

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Source:

Roediger III, H (January 2005). Why are textbooks so expensive. Observer, 18, Retrieved July 23, 2007, from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1712

College Bookstores Fight Textbook Legislation

This year alone, 86 textbook bills have been introduced in 26 states, according to the National Association of College Stores (NACS).  NACS is starting to feel the heat, as evidenced by the launch of their online Legislative Action Center, a grassroots campaign to help their college bookstore members locate and contact state and federal legislators to influence proposed textbook legislation.  NACS also has a field office in Washington D.C., which they claim is engaged in all levels of the policymaking process.

According to NACS Chief Operating Officer Brian Cartier, legislators are looking to influence the way bookstores do business without proposing any real remedies to improve textbook affordability.  For this reason, Cartier advises NACS members to get involved with proposed legislative actions that would affect college stores.

CampusBooks.com Inc. differs from NACS in that we believe any legislation aiming to make textbooks more affordable for students is worth investigating.  Making textbooks and education more affordable is the mission of CampusBooks.com, and it’s the reason we continue to search for innovative features to add to the site in order to better serve college students.  For a more personal look at CampusBooks.com, check out the CampusBooks.com MySpace page and add us as a friend: http://www.myspace.com/campusbooks.

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Source:

Moore, Yalinda. ” NACS CEO on Government Relations.” Campus Marketplace 13 JUL 2007 16 JUL 2007.  http://www.nacs.org/news/071307-mytake.asp?id=cm

Free Textbooks for All?

Students and readers alike can now download, print and distribute almost 750,000 e-books for free from the World eBook Fair.  The eBook Fair is sponsored by The World Public Library Consortia, one of the largest providers of e-books online.  Founded in 1996, the World Electronic Book Library Consortia is a global effort to preserve and disseminate classic works, commercial books, textbooks, encyclopedias and other reference works in an array of languages to a worldwide public.

The World eBook Fair will last from July 4th to Aug. 4th,, during which time users can legally download any book they want from the 125 vast collections available.  The e-books, which include instructional materials, government documents and textbooks, can be read with Adobe Reader.  To access the World eBook Fair, visit http://www.worldebookfair.com/.

This great project is a breath of fresh air for students’ suffocating wallets.   It is perfect for those that need commonly published and out-of-copyright books, such as “A Tale of Two Cities” or “Pride and Prejudice,” but unfortunately, students looking for current textbooks on the eBook Fair Web site will likely be disappointed.  Since textbooks are copyrighted, the only ones available for free are the antiquated texts.

So until textbooks are free for all, let Campusbooks.com help you find the cheapest price available for your textbooks!  See a sample comparison page of the textbook “Biology” by Campbell and Reece.  Retail price for that book is $158.67.  Lowest price on CampusBooks.com?  $50.99…for a brand new book!

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Source:

The World eBook Fair:  http://www.worldebookfair.com/

The World Public Library Consortia: http://worldpubliclibrary.org/AboutUs.htm