Students Find $100 Textbooks Cost $50, Purchased Overseas

New York Times ^ | October 21, 2003 | TAMAR LEWIN

[Fresh Wind]

Actually, all they have to do is revise the "review questions" at the end of each chapter from which homework is assigned. The content never has to change, but there are new questions every year. It's a perfect way to screw the students!

[Lil'freeper]

"This is a season when textbook publishers get kicked around a lot, and they're feeling vulnerable,"

Waaaaah.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

..until they graduate and become gouged British taxpayers, so they wind up paying for that low-tuition education for the rest of their stinkin' lives.

BUMP! There is no free lunch.

[cookcounty]

Textbook publishing is one of the most scam-ridden industries in America. They publish ever-bigger, heavier books while imparting less and less knowledge.

[cookcounty]

""This is a season when textbook publishers get kicked around a lot, and they're feeling vulnerable,"

Waaaaah.

Actually, it's the parents and kids exchanging huge wads of cash for almost useless textbooks that are getting kicked around a lot.

[stainlessbanner]

[stainlessbanner]

This pdf file published by the Ntl Association of College Stores tries to break up the publisher's profit. Nice try.

[cookcounty]

""I buy from Amazon.co.uk and from sources in the Far East, and I knew more and more students were doing the same thing, individually," said Tom Frey, owner of the University Bookstore at Purdue University, who sells the new books from overseas at the same price as a used American book. "Then this fall, for the first time, the Fed Ex man told me that the students at the Indian Association here at Purdue had just gotten a delivery of 14 skids of books, about 50 books each, from India. I think I'm losing about 10 percent of my sales to overseas books."

As a FedEx man myself, this is a wonderful heart-warming story to start my day with.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Well that is not as bad as what the record companies do to the artists.

At least the author is making 10%.

[richtig_faust]

OH it gets better. When I was in grad school all the orientals had "knock off" text books. for instance, J.D. Jackson's "Classical Electromagnetics" cost me $105 - they paid $5, and they had all the solutions manuals also.

[Final Authority]

I'll tell you a story about the reason the costs of textbooks are so high. In our system the administration decided to convert the math curriculum to Math-Land. The coordinators and select teachers got to go to a seminar in Maui HI for their trouble, spouses too. Guess who paid for this? If you think it was the publisher think again, it was the taxpayer in the cost of higher prices. In education stuff like this happens all the time, it is just a different form of corruption.

[Area51]

Hahahahaha

Yeah right. The bookstore only marks them up 8%. Hold on while I laugh to death.

The biggest money maker on Campuses is the Book sales.

[ThinkDifferent]

Then they should take an economics course.

Looks like they understand it well enough. Arbitrage is the natural response to price discrimination.

[eniapmot]

As a textbook author, I can assure you that that graphic is BOGUS. According to my contract, I get 15% royalty. However that is 15% before the bookstore markup. On one of my books, that markup is close to 50%. Furthermore, the bookstores go out of their way to buy the books even cheaper from so-called book-buyers who slink around campuses knocking on office doors asking to buy the freecopies that the publisher sends out (usually for something like $10, which they then sell to the bookstore for $20, who then sells to the student for $100 -- it is a NEW book).

[jwh_Denver]

Or the bookstores won't buy them back because, guess what? A new one is being used for the course.

And the only thing that's different is the edition number.

[NYProf]

Your comments on this revelation are valid. Many schools are dissolving their bookstores and students generally have only on-line purchase options. Most professors are aware of the cost of textbooks, particularly new ones. I advise my students that nearly any edition of the book will suffice (overseas purchases are frequently one or two editions behind). If there are minor differences in the sequencing, or even the updated info, I remain aware of that and take appropriate steps to ensure a "level playing field" in the classroom. In the meantime, be sure and let your school administrators know about this problem - - they need to step up to the problem but are not doing much. Remember, when they went to college, a textbook cost $15. :-)