10 ms·

A Brief History of the College Textbook Pricing Racket

137 points by yitchelle 10y ago

DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
I think it's a little disingenuous to call openstax "the Napster model", but it's still a good article nevertheless.
davejlsherwood 10y ago
The textbook price increases were once thought to be a genius way to increase profit margins. However like all goods and services, even those with the most inelastic demand curves have a point at which people will begin to substitute them for another good. Textbook piracy is at an all time high and publishers profits have fallen significantly. The long run solution is subscription - access to all the content required by the students at an affordable monthly price. I'm one of the co-founders of Bibliotech the Spotify for Textbooks (www.bibliotech.education). We are working with Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis and Cambridge University Press to achieve exactly that. Our challenge is convincing publishers to provide the necessary content under a subscription model
- macandcheese 10y ago
  This is an interesting angle - have you had any feedback from colleges themselves? What's your expected price-per-semester for an average student without the 14-day-free trial?
  - dgelks 10y ago
    With regards to the UK universities/colleges which we currently in the feedback is generally super positive since we can provide books in a more accessible format with a much lower upfront cost. Regarding price point (converted from GBP to USD) we currently have in Chemistry: 1) A premium plan with all the textbooks a student currently buys for ~$17/month ($102/sem) plus all optional reading 2) All optional reading for ~$4/month ($24/sem)
dougmccune 10y ago
One point that is often undiscussed: what defines a textbook has expanded greatly. It used to be that a textbook was just a book. But now a textbook is the book plus a huge collection of other resources, most of which the student never sees. A modern textbook includes tests with answer keys, a teaching guide that a grad student TA can use to teach an entire course, flash cards, supporting videos, handouts for class, online exercises, etc etc. The dirty secret of modern textbooks is that there has been a huge arms race in developing material that makes it easier to teach a course with less work. I don't really think that truly benefits students, since most of this material isn't for the student, it's for the professor (or more cynically for the free labor of grad students used to do a lot of the teaching). But you can't sell a textbook these days without it. I wish there was a universe in which you could sell a simple Psych 101 textbook for $50 and have that be that. But the market won't adopt a simple book like that without the myriad of extras. And since the market here is wonky, meaning the person making the decision (the professor) doesn't bear any of the cost (and might in fact benefit if it's her book), we end up where we are. This isn't to say that the whole new edition thing isn't worth criticism. Or that there aren't all sorts of things wrong with the industry. But the percentage increase you see in the cost of a textbook for students doesn't just equate to the same percentage increase in the profit margin of textbook publishers. They're not just making the same product from 40 years ago and jacking up the prices 1,000% as the article implies. The product is a whole different beast. (source: I sit on the board of my family's textbook publishing company)
- losteverything 10y ago
  Who is guiding your business, So to speak? My professors taught mostly from the textbook. I assumed (back then) they chose the texts. Chemistry. Biology. Math. Even computer science (funny that was an IBM manual and some profs college printed and stapled pages of machine instructions), physical geography (strahler & strahler), humanities, etc. But each prof referred to text to cover on our own. So now who choses what text? And doesn't that drive why you print what you print? What happens if prof doesn't like chapter 10, say?
  - dougmccune 10y ago
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
I wish it was only the college textbook market that was the victim of the racket. I know of 12 year olds who have 10 kg of school books. No one cares.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  At least the books are free.
  - zaroth 10y ago
    Of course they aren't.
    - hexane360 10y ago
      But the entity who decides to use the book is pretty much the same as the entity who budgets the money for the book. In a university, the students pay while the professors/departments choose.
      - p4wnc6 10y ago
        My sister's public middle school in Indiana has student book fees, and various fees for using mandatory assigned Chromebooks, some of which are refunded if it's returned in good order at the end of the year, some aren't. If you are low-income, you can get the fees waived, and the majority of her school books are still free. But not all.
      - ivan_ah 10y ago
        I see your point, but I think individual schools don't make the choice. This stuff is usually done at the school board level, or maybe even State level. It's a giant racket too, perhaps even worse than the university-level racket: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
  - ajdlinux 10y ago
    Not always... pretty sure even for the brief time I was in a public primary school here in Australia my parents had to contribute for textbooks. I suspect they had some kind of aid available for families who really couldn't afford it, but I'm not sure.
c517402 10y ago
I seem to remember that the IRS changed the tax law on book publishers in the late '70s. Before the change, publishers made large printing runs of well respected texts and kept the unsold and warehoused books on their ledgers as raw materials. The IRS changed the law and required the unsold books to be counted as assets at the wholesale price, and taxes paid on those assets. This started the current new-edition-every-year model of publishing textbooks that has spiraled into the current situation.
- linkregister 10y ago
  Can you share a bit more information about this? I was unaware that assets sitting in a warehouse were taxed at all. Indeed, assets are typically depreciated in order to claim tax deductions.
  - c517402 10y ago
    I wish I could be definitive. This the explanation I was given by one of my professors. As I understand it most large businesses use accrual accounting, instead of cash accounting that a small business might use. In accrual accounting money is recorded in the ledger (I would say put on the books, but that could be confusing given the topic.) when a sale is made, even though the cash may not have yet been received. So, you have a profit on paper even though you don't have the cash in hand. The IRS ruled that all the books the publisher printed had to go in the ledger at face value when printed instead of waiting for a sale. That means that on paper, via accrual accounting, there is a profit that is taxed whether the publisher has the cash in hand or not. Publishers could record sales and make there quarterly tax payments knowing that they would get the cash in hand next quarter, but recording the printing of the books as sales and paying taxes that quarter when they might not actually sell the books for years was to much of a burden. Publishers started producing just the number books they thought they would need for the year. And, next year, if you are setting up a whole new printing run why not make corrections and updates, that is, print a new edition.
Mendenhall 10y ago
Pay a company to make the "book", dont print any copies, put it online for any school to use and charge like 50 cents a download. School requires to see your reciept so they know its legit, prices drop. Thing is they arent really serious about lowering the cost of education.
- yitchelle 10y ago
  Why shoot the duck that lays the golden egg? But seriously, I would have thought the second hand market for used text books would huge as the course contents rarely change from year to year. It looks like this is ripe for a disruption.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
    The publishers already solved that problem by constantly revising the books making the previous editions unusable.
  - killaken2000 10y ago
    Part of the problem is with the codes that are required for homework. A class that I'm taking right now has a code for $110 and a code and textbook for $135. So the textbook isn't really worth very much secondhand. The code is the only required part of the class and is essential for the homework. After the basic GenEds and weed-out classes are over there doesn't seem to be that much use of online grading. Possibly due to the amount of students that are left over at that point. Then you have more leeway on buying a used or earlier edition. In my Chemistry class there were 600 students and we had to purchase a code for the online homework. I've been told that there is no other way to grade that much homework. Non-STEM (like English Literature) classes seem to have less of a problem with purchasing codes for homework. The English Literature classes I've had in the past just require you to read a certain book and write a paper on it. But there wasn't any problem getting an older book or a used book. Also if you need to do problems out of the book you need to have the right book to do the right problems. The professor will tell you what chapter and what questions but not what the text of the questions. Though you could copy the questions from someone else's book.
zeveb 10y ago
> The duo noted the picture-free material tended to be comprehended just as well as material with pictures, but students preferred the more vibrant option. I wonder why students' preferences are even a consideration: if they learn just as well with older, pictureless books … why not use those? > But it's worth asking—if professors know these textbooks are absurdly expensive, why assign them? Well, the answer involves a couple of factors, basically: Many professors simply don't know the prices of the textbooks, and, far less frequently, sometimes the professors themselves wrote the book. FWIW, when I was in school I recall one professor doing his best to ensure that our bill for each of his classes was never more than $50. I think that all of our professors exercised some care in that regard — but ours was a small liberal arts college, with every class taught by a professor or associate professor.
- tamana 10y ago
  The best thing about these book scams is that it is clear signalling: a professor who forces you to use them is either a bad prof, or trapped at a bad school.
rdtsc 10y ago
I remember coming to US to go to High School then to University and noticed the books huge, heavy things. Full of pictures and shiny pages, yet content sucked and was spread out unnecessarily. Everything could have been condensed to a 1/3 or 1/4 size. Then when I got to University also happened to notice they cost an arm and a leg. So I was thinking, I'll just sell them back when I am done and get the money back. Nope, it cost only a small fraction of original price I paid. Because a new version was out already. Ever since I consider publishers of those books scam artists and crooks. In college I had a meager stipend, and only later got a job on campus for minimum wage -- I had work extra hours at night to make sure to have enough for next quarter when an unpredictable (but high) amount of money would be needed to pay for books.
- bunderbunder 10y ago
  Amen on the content being awful. I'm in school right now, and have noticed a distinctly inverse relationship between the size of the textbook and the clarity of its instruction. Especially in math books.
  - ivan_ah 10y ago
    Imagine you're the author, and you have to explain derivatives in 100 pages, because your boss asked you to make the book 1000+ pages long. Including definitions, formulas, examples, and problems, you could get to 30 pages. You'd think it's impossible to write 70pp of padding, yet somehow they make it happen... So students are double the victims: they pay through the nose, and they get 100pp of crappy explanations, where 30pp would do.
diamondlovesyou 10y ago
As a student, I've been fortunate in that most of the time I can find pdfs of the books I need, saving me a dime and the pain of the weight of a normal textbook. The two books I had to buy this semester were books I still bought online, and I still hate them: they're slow, don't work without the internet, constantly log me out (b/c timeouts), and why the fuck can't I cntl-C? Chemistry nomenclature is a bitch. Give me a pdf for use in my favorite pdf reader damnit! The other stuff I fucking hate is the free resources given to professors (yay, fiscal budgeting!), but shifts the revenue stream to the student. For example, iClicker, which provides the server for free to the professor but makes the students buy a physical clicker ($50); when this service could just use the fucking web-browser and make the professor/university I pay tuition purchase this REQUIRED part of the course pay for the software. Or the online homework, which is also a purchased item (like $60-70 too). I don't pay for the organic chem lab equipment (and couldn't; that stuff is expensive!). To be clear, I have not a problem with using these materials. I also don't mind paying for them. But I ONLY want to pay for it through tuition! Also, why don't publishers work directly with universities so that every student is provided with a copy of textbook/homework? It seems to me that that would be a sure fire way to prevent lost sales due to the used textbook market/pirating. They could just get the university to purchase pdfs of the textbook for each student every year: it would drive down the incentive to pirate and would mean they didn't need to develop their own shitty-af reader. A win-win. Anyway, to those still reading: sorry 'bout the language. This status quo drives me absolutely bonkers.
- zizzles 10y ago
  How's reading PDF textbooks on an e-reader for you? Personally, I've found them a nuisance because you are not able to skim through pages quickly as you can with a traditional textbook. Let's not forget the small screen size.
  - hackits 10y ago
    Found for large text books the Ipad air 2/3/pro to be a live saver. I tried E-ink but gave up after most of them suck for reading large text books. Also advantage of the ipad is you can load it up more modern that can assist your learning where by a book is a dead tree.
sitkack 10y ago
Here are some hits $181 Campbell Biology: Concepts & Connections [0] $275 Fundamentals of Financial Management [1] $201 Psychology, 11th Edition [2] $248 Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm (14th Edition) [3] $254 Marketing Management (15th Edition) [4] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-Concepts-Connections-8th/dp/0321885325 https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-Concepts-Connections... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Financial-Management-Finance-Brigham/dp/1285867971 https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Financial-Management-Fin... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-11th-David-G-Myers/dp/1464140812 https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-11th-David-G-Myers/dp/1464... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Management-Information-Systems-Managing-Digital/dp/0133898164 https://www.amazon.com/Management-Information-Systems-Managi... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Management-15th-Philip-Kotler/dp/0133856461 https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Management-15th-Philip-Kotl...
- sotojuan 10y ago
  I never purchased any textbooks in my 4 years of a Computer Science degree. I always found them online or the professor would be smart and have his/her own material online. The only books I had were for some of my humanities classes because they were actual books (novels, nonfiction) that were good.
  - wernercd 10y ago
    After the first or second semester I learned to buy (or... cough... acquire) the book when needed. It's amazing how many books are listed but never get used... and it's amazing how easy it is to get most books if you know where to look. It is hit or miss (some books are impossible to find), but its amazing how much money I've probably saved.
  - killaken2000 10y ago
    If it weren't for the online codes it would be a lot easier to get through college without purchasing textbooks. The books are easy to find but the most of the cost has been shifted to the online codes. Most of the early math/phys/chem classes require codes to access the online homework.
Spooky23 10y ago
The ultimate bullshit textbook is the "Mercury Reader" and it's ilk. It's frequently assigned to English Comp 1 & 2 classes and is basically a collection of short stories or books, a mixture of licensed and public domain works. When my dad taught it last year, it was $90, and all of the assigned reading could be obtained from project Gutenberg. He told the class to return the book and get the material online, and got a stern talk from the department chair (he's an adjunct)
ivan_ah 10y ago
Yes, textbook pricing is totally out of whack. Also, the need to legitimize the higher sticker prices forces publishers to make books that are bloated, repetitive, and waaay too long. Who has time to read 1000+ pages? The textbook racket and bad quality of explanations is precisely why I started a publishing company: we make science textbooks that don't suck. [1] No bullshit guide to math & physics => http://www.lulu.com/shop/ivan-savov/no-bullshit-guide-to-math-and-physics/paperback/product-22839889.html http://www.lulu.com/shop/ivan-savov/no-bullshit-guide-to-mat... (recently released v5.1) [2] No bullshit guide to linear algebra => http://gum.co/noBSLA http://gum.co/noBSLA There are also really good free books out there, with my favourite "gems" being really old books like this one on basic math https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41568/41568-pdf.pdf#page=3 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41568/41568-pdf.pdf#page=3 and this one on calculus http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf#page=3 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf#page=3 The calculus book is tiny, yet it covers the same material as a mainstream calculus book.
- whorleater 10y ago
  I realize this is self promotion for your textbook company (who's goals I laud! Acessible knowledge is a good thing), but the idea that a text book is "too long" is...odd. I've never been expected to read a textbook cover to cover before, and all the extra content a textbook has makes it a remarkable resource for referencing even after the class has finished. While the basics of knowledge can be disseminated in far fewer pages, the upsides of having extra examples and asides in a textbook pretty easily outweighs the downsides (unless you count pricing).
  - ivan_ah 10y ago
    I agree that examples and asides are useful. What I had in mind is certain chapters in physics or math books that are fully boil down to one equation, but somehow end up stretching the narrative out to fill dozens of pages. Just the other day I was looking for the statement of Stokes theorem in a mainstream calculus textbook, and fell upon two special formulations, one 'outline' of a derivation, before finally finding the theorem. Even though I knew exactly what I was looking for it took me minutes. What would a student remember from this chapter? A much better structure would be to state the Stokes' theorem upfront and then give a few examples, and maybe show the derivation, then end the chapter. Short and sweet; something the reader will remember.
vinchuco 10y ago
Gen.lib.rus.ec It has really an impressive selection on textbooks of any kind.
ekimekim 10y ago
I find it shocking to realise, reading these comments, that the university is requiring you to buy these books in order to pass. I didn't buy a single textbook for my entire Maths/Comp Sci degree (only about 5 years ago, at University of Sydney). The maths dept generally didn't use them (they had optional notes books that were just dense maths, generally written by the professor, and cost about $20), and the IT dept...I think had them but I didn't need them and we were never assigned homework from them. The one case where I had an assignment (read: something that was worth marks) assigned from a book, I complained and the professor provided me with a copy of the relevant question. I can understand recommended texts. But I can't understand requiring you to make an additional purchase just to complete assigned work...at that point you're effectively just paying for marks.
- fabian2k 10y ago
  I suspect this is mostly a US problem, courses there seem to be structures differently than how I experienced it in Germany. With one single exception, all the textbooks I bought were not required, I selected them myself based on recommendations, but I could have chosen to buy different ones or none at all. The textbooks are still expensive, though the non-US editions are around half the price of the US versions. But it's a level of expense that seems justified based on the value I got, at least for the better books.
- tamana 10y ago
  Oh you don't have to buy the books. You just have to buy a license key so you can submit your homework for credit!
  - yitchelle 10y ago
    The cost is not just the purchase of the key. To work effectively at this, you would also have to get access to the a computer and the internet. Both of which are not ubiquitous as, say, electricity and cost money. I understand that this is a 1st world situation, but even in the 1st world, access to a computer and the internet is always possible.
Fej 10y ago
Everyone pirates textbooks. The fuckers at the textbook companies can go dig their own graves. Artificial scarcity is their only hope, and they can't resell calculus and Newton's laws forever... it's not like they've changed in the past few years. I can imagine a parody commercial... I saved hundreds of dollars this semester by switching to BitTorrent!
- emerod 10y ago
  I don't even understand why some college students still lug around tons of worthless paper textbooks.
plopilop 10y ago
Honestly, I don't understand what is the goal of the teachers by making their students buy textbooks a hundred of $. In my engineering school (France), teachers write their own textbooks and make them available to us as PDFs. You can pay for paper version at the school's printer (~150€ per year, and then you'll have all the textbooks for your year, and trust me, many students find that very expensive, especially when you only get 3-4 textbooks some years). In the university I went, it was the same, except that the only teacher who had written a textbook gave it to us for free (300 pages). The rest of them gave us their PDFs. That's why, would a teacher ask us to buy a book some insane amount of money, students would not understand, and at the end, not buy the book. Moreover, what do the US teachers gain from this? I truly don't understand how they support this racket.
- chvid 10y ago
  Because the books are written by the teachers (or their colleagues)?
- ralfruns 10y ago
  Also, many textbooks come with teaching material, incl. slides and handouts, short tests, etc. If you have to teach a course for the first time, it is super easy to get up and running with little prep work.
  - plopilop 10y ago
    Interesting. But then, I would say it's part of the teacher's job to prepare his slides and exams, he shouldn't charge the students because he didn't have time to do his job. If he wants some ease in his teaching preparation, fine, but he should be the one paying for it. I mean, if the textbook has everything, the teacher could as well not even bother to come and teach the class, since the students already paid for everything. In our high schools, exercise books are mandatory, but they are bought by the school and usually last more than 5 years (you don't keep them). Couldn't it be the case in US colleges, if teachers really want to rely on some textbook? Also, to answer the other comment, making students pay for your own textbook is completely unethical, especially for academics who are supposed to hold to a minimum of work ethics. So, I'm surprised it's so widespread. I know that I don't live in the US and that mentalities are different in every country, but here I see that teachers make students pay because they don't want to prepare their classes and because they receive royalties for every sold textbook.

137 points by yitchelle 10y ago

I think it's a little disingenuous to call openstax "the Napster model", but it's still a good article nevertheless.

The textbook price increases were once thought to be a genius way to increase profit margins. However like all goods and services, even those with the most inelastic demand curves have a point at which people will begin to substitute them for another good. Textbook piracy is at an all time high and publishers profits have fallen significantly. The long run solution is subscription - access to all the content required by the students at an affordable monthly price. I'm one of the co-founders of Bibliotech the Spotify for Textbooks (www.bibliotech.education). We are working with Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis and Cambridge University Press to achieve exactly that. Our challenge is convincing publishers to provide the necessary content under a subscription model

macandcheese 10y ago
This is an interesting angle - have you had any feedback from colleges themselves? What's your expected price-per-semester for an average student without the 14-day-free trial?
- dgelks 10y ago
  With regards to the UK universities/colleges which we currently in the feedback is generally super positive since we can provide books in a more accessible format with a much lower upfront cost. Regarding price point (converted from GBP to USD) we currently have in Chemistry: 1) A premium plan with all the textbooks a student currently buys for ~$17/month ($102/sem) plus all optional reading 2) All optional reading for ~$4/month ($24/sem)

dougmccune 10y ago

One point that is often undiscussed: what defines a textbook has expanded greatly. It used to be that a textbook was just a book. But now a textbook is the book plus a huge collection of other resources, most of which the student never sees. A modern textbook includes tests with answer keys, a teaching guide that a grad student TA can use to teach an entire course, flash cards, supporting videos, handouts for class, online exercises, etc etc. The dirty secret of modern textbooks is that there has been a huge arms race in developing material that makes it easier to teach a course with less work. I don't really think that truly benefits students, since most of this material isn't for the student, it's for the professor (or more cynically for the free labor of grad students used to do a lot of the teaching). But you can't sell a textbook these days without it. I wish there was a universe in which you could sell a simple Psych 101 textbook for $50 and have that be that. But the market won't adopt a simple book like that without the myriad of extras. And since the market here is wonky, meaning the person making the decision (the professor) doesn't bear any of the cost (and might in fact benefit if it's her book), we end up where we are. This isn't to say that the whole new edition thing isn't worth criticism. Or that there aren't all sorts of things wrong with the industry. But the percentage increase you see in the cost of a textbook for students doesn't just equate to the same percentage increase in the profit margin of textbook publishers. They're not just making the same product from 40 years ago and jacking up the prices 1,000% as the article implies. The product is a whole different beast. (source: I sit on the board of my family's textbook publishing company)

losteverything 10y ago
Who is guiding your business, So to speak? My professors taught mostly from the textbook. I assumed (back then) they chose the texts. Chemistry. Biology. Math. Even computer science (funny that was an IBM manual and some profs college printed and stapled pages of machine instructions), physical geography (strahler & strahler), humanities, etc. But each prof referred to text to cover on our own. So now who choses what text? And doesn't that drive why you print what you print? What happens if prof doesn't like chapter 10, say?
- dougmccune 10y ago

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago

I wish it was only the college textbook market that was the victim of the racket. I know of 12 year olds who have 10 kg of school books. No one cares.

sotojuan 10y ago
At least the books are free.
- zaroth 10y ago
  Of course they aren't.
  - hexane360 10y ago
    But the entity who decides to use the book is pretty much the same as the entity who budgets the money for the book. In a university, the students pay while the professors/departments choose.
    - p4wnc6 10y ago
      My sister's public middle school in Indiana has student book fees, and various fees for using mandatory assigned Chromebooks, some of which are refunded if it's returned in good order at the end of the year, some aren't. If you are low-income, you can get the fees waived, and the majority of her school books are still free. But not all.
    - ivan_ah 10y ago
      I see your point, but I think individual schools don't make the choice. This stuff is usually done at the school board level, or maybe even State level. It's a giant racket too, perhaps even worse than the university-level racket: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
- ajdlinux 10y ago
  Not always... pretty sure even for the brief time I was in a public primary school here in Australia my parents had to contribute for textbooks. I suspect they had some kind of aid available for families who really couldn't afford it, but I'm not sure.

c517402 10y ago

I seem to remember that the IRS changed the tax law on book publishers in the late '70s. Before the change, publishers made large printing runs of well respected texts and kept the unsold and warehoused books on their ledgers as raw materials. The IRS changed the law and required the unsold books to be counted as assets at the wholesale price, and taxes paid on those assets. This started the current new-edition-every-year model of publishing textbooks that has spiraled into the current situation.

linkregister 10y ago
Can you share a bit more information about this? I was unaware that assets sitting in a warehouse were taxed at all. Indeed, assets are typically depreciated in order to claim tax deductions.
- c517402 10y ago
  I wish I could be definitive. This the explanation I was given by one of my professors. As I understand it most large businesses use accrual accounting, instead of cash accounting that a small business might use. In accrual accounting money is recorded in the ledger (I would say put on the books, but that could be confusing given the topic.) when a sale is made, even though the cash may not have yet been received. So, you have a profit on paper even though you don't have the cash in hand. The IRS ruled that all the books the publisher printed had to go in the ledger at face value when printed instead of waiting for a sale. That means that on paper, via accrual accounting, there is a profit that is taxed whether the publisher has the cash in hand or not. Publishers could record sales and make there quarterly tax payments knowing that they would get the cash in hand next quarter, but recording the printing of the books as sales and paying taxes that quarter when they might not actually sell the books for years was to much of a burden. Publishers started producing just the number books they thought they would need for the year. And, next year, if you are setting up a whole new printing run why not make corrections and updates, that is, print a new edition.

Mendenhall 10y ago

Pay a company to make the "book", dont print any copies, put it online for any school to use and charge like 50 cents a download. School requires to see your reciept so they know its legit, prices drop. Thing is they arent really serious about lowering the cost of education.

yitchelle 10y ago
Why shoot the duck that lays the golden egg? But seriously, I would have thought the second hand market for used text books would huge as the course contents rarely change from year to year. It looks like this is ripe for a disruption.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
  The publishers already solved that problem by constantly revising the books making the previous editions unusable.
- killaken2000 10y ago
  Part of the problem is with the codes that are required for homework. A class that I'm taking right now has a code for $110 and a code and textbook for $135. So the textbook isn't really worth very much secondhand. The code is the only required part of the class and is essential for the homework. After the basic GenEds and weed-out classes are over there doesn't seem to be that much use of online grading. Possibly due to the amount of students that are left over at that point. Then you have more leeway on buying a used or earlier edition. In my Chemistry class there were 600 students and we had to purchase a code for the online homework. I've been told that there is no other way to grade that much homework. Non-STEM (like English Literature) classes seem to have less of a problem with purchasing codes for homework. The English Literature classes I've had in the past just require you to read a certain book and write a paper on it. But there wasn't any problem getting an older book or a used book. Also if you need to do problems out of the book you need to have the right book to do the right problems. The professor will tell you what chapter and what questions but not what the text of the questions. Though you could copy the questions from someone else's book.

zeveb 10y ago

> The duo noted the picture-free material tended to be comprehended just as well as material with pictures, but students preferred the more vibrant option. I wonder why students' preferences are even a consideration: if they learn just as well with older, pictureless books … why not use those? > But it's worth asking—if professors know these textbooks are absurdly expensive, why assign them? Well, the answer involves a couple of factors, basically: Many professors simply don't know the prices of the textbooks, and, far less frequently, sometimes the professors themselves wrote the book. FWIW, when I was in school I recall one professor doing his best to ensure that our bill for each of his classes was never more than $50. I think that all of our professors exercised some care in that regard — but ours was a small liberal arts college, with every class taught by a professor or associate professor.

tamana 10y ago
The best thing about these book scams is that it is clear signalling: a professor who forces you to use them is either a bad prof, or trapped at a bad school.

rdtsc 10y ago

I remember coming to US to go to High School then to University and noticed the books huge, heavy things. Full of pictures and shiny pages, yet content sucked and was spread out unnecessarily. Everything could have been condensed to a 1/3 or 1/4 size. Then when I got to University also happened to notice they cost an arm and a leg. So I was thinking, I'll just sell them back when I am done and get the money back. Nope, it cost only a small fraction of original price I paid. Because a new version was out already. Ever since I consider publishers of those books scam artists and crooks. In college I had a meager stipend, and only later got a job on campus for minimum wage -- I had work extra hours at night to make sure to have enough for next quarter when an unpredictable (but high) amount of money would be needed to pay for books.

bunderbunder 10y ago
Amen on the content being awful. I'm in school right now, and have noticed a distinctly inverse relationship between the size of the textbook and the clarity of its instruction. Especially in math books.
- ivan_ah 10y ago
  Imagine you're the author, and you have to explain derivatives in 100 pages, because your boss asked you to make the book 1000+ pages long. Including definitions, formulas, examples, and problems, you could get to 30 pages. You'd think it's impossible to write 70pp of padding, yet somehow they make it happen... So students are double the victims: they pay through the nose, and they get 100pp of crappy explanations, where 30pp would do.

diamondlovesyou 10y ago

As a student, I've been fortunate in that most of the time I can find pdfs of the books I need, saving me a dime and the pain of the weight of a normal textbook. The two books I had to buy this semester were books I still bought online, and I still hate them: they're slow, don't work without the internet, constantly log me out (b/c timeouts), and why the fuck can't I cntl-C? Chemistry nomenclature is a bitch. Give me a pdf for use in my favorite pdf reader damnit! The other stuff I fucking hate is the free resources given to professors (yay, fiscal budgeting!), but shifts the revenue stream to the student. For example, iClicker, which provides the server for free to the professor but makes the students buy a physical clicker ($50); when this service could just use the fucking web-browser and make the professor/university I pay tuition purchase this REQUIRED part of the course pay for the software. Or the online homework, which is also a purchased item (like $60-70 too). I don't pay for the organic chem lab equipment (and couldn't; that stuff is expensive!). To be clear, I have not a problem with using these materials. I also don't mind paying for them. But I ONLY want to pay for it through tuition! Also, why don't publishers work directly with universities so that every student is provided with a copy of textbook/homework? It seems to me that that would be a sure fire way to prevent lost sales due to the used textbook market/pirating. They could just get the university to purchase pdfs of the textbook for each student every year: it would drive down the incentive to pirate and would mean they didn't need to develop their own shitty-af reader. A win-win. Anyway, to those still reading: sorry 'bout the language. This status quo drives me absolutely bonkers.

zizzles 10y ago
How's reading PDF textbooks on an e-reader for you? Personally, I've found them a nuisance because you are not able to skim through pages quickly as you can with a traditional textbook. Let's not forget the small screen size.
- hackits 10y ago
  Found for large text books the Ipad air 2/3/pro to be a live saver. I tried E-ink but gave up after most of them suck for reading large text books. Also advantage of the ipad is you can load it up more modern that can assist your learning where by a book is a dead tree.

sitkack 10y ago

Here are some hits $181 Campbell Biology: Concepts & Connections [0] $275 Fundamentals of Financial Management [1] $201 Psychology, 11th Edition [2] $248 Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm (14th Edition) [3] $254 Marketing Management (15th Edition) [4] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-Concepts-Connections-8th/dp/0321885325 https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-Concepts-Connections... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Financial-Management-Finance-Brigham/dp/1285867971 https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Financial-Management-Fin... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-11th-David-G-Myers/dp/1464140812 https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-11th-David-G-Myers/dp/1464... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Management-Information-Systems-Managing-Digital/dp/0133898164 https://www.amazon.com/Management-Information-Systems-Managi... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Management-15th-Philip-Kotler/dp/0133856461 https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Management-15th-Philip-Kotl...

sotojuan 10y ago
I never purchased any textbooks in my 4 years of a Computer Science degree. I always found them online or the professor would be smart and have his/her own material online. The only books I had were for some of my humanities classes because they were actual books (novels, nonfiction) that were good.
- wernercd 10y ago
  After the first or second semester I learned to buy (or... cough... acquire) the book when needed. It's amazing how many books are listed but never get used... and it's amazing how easy it is to get most books if you know where to look. It is hit or miss (some books are impossible to find), but its amazing how much money I've probably saved.
- killaken2000 10y ago
  If it weren't for the online codes it would be a lot easier to get through college without purchasing textbooks. The books are easy to find but the most of the cost has been shifted to the online codes. Most of the early math/phys/chem classes require codes to access the online homework.

Spooky23 10y ago

The ultimate bullshit textbook is the "Mercury Reader" and it's ilk. It's frequently assigned to English Comp 1 & 2 classes and is basically a collection of short stories or books, a mixture of licensed and public domain works. When my dad taught it last year, it was $90, and all of the assigned reading could be obtained from project Gutenberg. He told the class to return the book and get the material online, and got a stern talk from the department chair (he's an adjunct)

ivan_ah 10y ago

Yes, textbook pricing is totally out of whack. Also, the need to legitimize the higher sticker prices forces publishers to make books that are bloated, repetitive, and waaay too long. Who has time to read 1000+ pages? The textbook racket and bad quality of explanations is precisely why I started a publishing company: we make science textbooks that don't suck. [1] No bullshit guide to math & physics => http://www.lulu.com/shop/ivan-savov/no-bullshit-guide-to-math-and-physics/paperback/product-22839889.html http://www.lulu.com/shop/ivan-savov/no-bullshit-guide-to-mat... (recently released v5.1) [2] No bullshit guide to linear algebra => http://gum.co/noBSLA http://gum.co/noBSLA There are also really good free books out there, with my favourite "gems" being really old books like this one on basic math https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41568/41568-pdf.pdf#page=3 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41568/41568-pdf.pdf#page=3 and this one on calculus http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf#page=3 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf#page=3 The calculus book is tiny, yet it covers the same material as a mainstream calculus book.

whorleater 10y ago
I realize this is self promotion for your textbook company (who's goals I laud! Acessible knowledge is a good thing), but the idea that a text book is "too long" is...odd. I've never been expected to read a textbook cover to cover before, and all the extra content a textbook has makes it a remarkable resource for referencing even after the class has finished. While the basics of knowledge can be disseminated in far fewer pages, the upsides of having extra examples and asides in a textbook pretty easily outweighs the downsides (unless you count pricing).
- ivan_ah 10y ago
  I agree that examples and asides are useful. What I had in mind is certain chapters in physics or math books that are fully boil down to one equation, but somehow end up stretching the narrative out to fill dozens of pages. Just the other day I was looking for the statement of Stokes theorem in a mainstream calculus textbook, and fell upon two special formulations, one 'outline' of a derivation, before finally finding the theorem. Even though I knew exactly what I was looking for it took me minutes. What would a student remember from this chapter? A much better structure would be to state the Stokes' theorem upfront and then give a few examples, and maybe show the derivation, then end the chapter. Short and sweet; something the reader will remember.

vinchuco 10y ago

Gen.lib.rus.ec It has really an impressive selection on textbooks of any kind.

ekimekim 10y ago

I find it shocking to realise, reading these comments, that the university is requiring you to buy these books in order to pass. I didn't buy a single textbook for my entire Maths/Comp Sci degree (only about 5 years ago, at University of Sydney). The maths dept generally didn't use them (they had optional notes books that were just dense maths, generally written by the professor, and cost about $20), and the IT dept...I think had them but I didn't need them and we were never assigned homework from them. The one case where I had an assignment (read: something that was worth marks) assigned from a book, I complained and the professor provided me with a copy of the relevant question. I can understand recommended texts. But I can't understand requiring you to make an additional purchase just to complete assigned work...at that point you're effectively just paying for marks.

fabian2k 10y ago
I suspect this is mostly a US problem, courses there seem to be structures differently than how I experienced it in Germany. With one single exception, all the textbooks I bought were not required, I selected them myself based on recommendations, but I could have chosen to buy different ones or none at all. The textbooks are still expensive, though the non-US editions are around half the price of the US versions. But it's a level of expense that seems justified based on the value I got, at least for the better books.
tamana 10y ago
Oh you don't have to buy the books. You just have to buy a license key so you can submit your homework for credit!
- yitchelle 10y ago
  The cost is not just the purchase of the key. To work effectively at this, you would also have to get access to the a computer and the internet. Both of which are not ubiquitous as, say, electricity and cost money. I understand that this is a 1st world situation, but even in the 1st world, access to a computer and the internet is always possible.

Fej 10y ago

Everyone pirates textbooks. The fuckers at the textbook companies can go dig their own graves. Artificial scarcity is their only hope, and they can't resell calculus and Newton's laws forever... it's not like they've changed in the past few years. I can imagine a parody commercial... I saved hundreds of dollars this semester by switching to BitTorrent!

emerod 10y ago
I don't even understand why some college students still lug around tons of worthless paper textbooks.

plopilop 10y ago

Honestly, I don't understand what is the goal of the teachers by making their students buy textbooks a hundred of $. In my engineering school (France), teachers write their own textbooks and make them available to us as PDFs. You can pay for paper version at the school's printer (~150€ per year, and then you'll have all the textbooks for your year, and trust me, many students find that very expensive, especially when you only get 3-4 textbooks some years). In the university I went, it was the same, except that the only teacher who had written a textbook gave it to us for free (300 pages). The rest of them gave us their PDFs. That's why, would a teacher ask us to buy a book some insane amount of money, students would not understand, and at the end, not buy the book. Moreover, what do the US teachers gain from this? I truly don't understand how they support this racket.

chvid 10y ago
Because the books are written by the teachers (or their colleagues)?
ralfruns 10y ago
Also, many textbooks come with teaching material, incl. slides and handouts, short tests, etc. If you have to teach a course for the first time, it is super easy to get up and running with little prep work.
- plopilop 10y ago
  Interesting. But then, I would say it's part of the teacher's job to prepare his slides and exams, he shouldn't charge the students because he didn't have time to do his job. If he wants some ease in his teaching preparation, fine, but he should be the one paying for it. I mean, if the textbook has everything, the teacher could as well not even bother to come and teach the class, since the students already paid for everything. In our high schools, exercise books are mandatory, but they are bought by the school and usually last more than 5 years (you don't keep them). Couldn't it be the case in US colleges, if teachers really want to rely on some textbook? Also, to answer the other comment, making students pay for your own textbook is completely unethical, especially for academics who are supposed to hold to a minimum of work ethics. So, I'm surprised it's so widespread. I know that I don't live in the US and that mentalities are different in every country, but here I see that teachers make students pay because they don't want to prepare their classes and because they receive royalties for every sold textbook.