Why are textbooks so expensive?

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

Dick Feynman’s experience with reviewing primary school math and science textbooks for the California Board of Education was that perfidy and overpricing was standard practice among publishers.*[During my time on the commission,] there were two books that we were unable to come to a decision about after much discussion; they were extremely close. So we left it open to the Board of Education to decide. Since the board was now taking the cost into consideration, and since the two books were so evenly matched, the board decided to open the bids and take the lower one.

Then the question came up, “Will the schools be getting the books at the regular time, or could they, perhaps, get them a little earlier, in time for the coming term?”

One publisher’s representative got up and said, “We are happy that you accepted our bid; we can get it out in time for the next term.”

A representative of the publisher that lost out was also there, and he got up and said, “Since our bids were submitted based on the later deadline, I think we should have a chance a bid again for the earlier deadline, because we too can meet the earlier deadline.”

Mr. Norris, the Pasadena lawyer on the board, asked the guy from the other publisher, “And how much would it cost for us to get your books at the earlier date?”

And he gave a number: It was less!

The first guy got up: “If he changes his bid, I have the right to change my bid!” – and his bid is still less!

Norris asked, “Well how is that – we get the books earlier and it’s cheaper?”

“Yes,” one guy says. “We can use a special offset method we wouldn’t normally use . . .” – some excuse why it came out cheaper. The other guy agreed: “When you do it quicker, it costs less!”

That was really a shock. It ended up two million dollars cheaper. Norris was really incensed by this sudden change.

What happened, of course, was that the uncertainty about the date had opened the possibility that these guys could bid against each other. Normally, when books were supposed to be chosen without taking the cost into consideration, there was no reason to lower the price; the book publishers could put the prices at any place they wanted to. There was no advantage in competing by lowering the price; the way you competed was to impress the members of the curriculum commission. *

Of the ~$100 engineering and science textbooks, I can’t remember a single one that didn’t have multiple errors in the text–some of them significant–and wrong answers in many of the problem sets. One physics prof I had actually handed out notes that essentially comprised his own text, and used the issued text for the class as merely a reference for problems.

Ironically, the text and problems in inexpensive third-party supplementary guides like Schaum’s Outlines seem to have much better content, despite the cheap printing and lack of color. I can only remember finding an error in Schaum’s once or twice. For reference, I actually have a sizable collection of Dover textbooks (inexpensive reprints of classic texts) which are quite adequate for most subjects that aren’t on the cutting edge; indeed, Den Hartog’s Mechanics and Mechanical Vibrations are some of the best, most comprehensive texts I’ve read in those areas, and their reprint of Linus Pauling’s General Chemistry is by far the best introductory chemistry text I’ve seen.

Stranger

[footballisplayedwithyourfeet]

@Slightly_mad_scientist

My personal opinion is, that US students are getting ripped off. Most textbooks in my area of study (biochemistry) are more expensive in the United States than in Germany. I’ve compared it a few times in the past and the american version was always significantly more expensive than the international edition of the same textbook.

One big difference is, that in Germany there are usually no required textbooks. The students can decide themselves which textbooks they really need, which ones they loan from the library and which ones they don’t ever look into. I’ve only ever bought those book, where I thought there was a chance I would look into them even after I finished the course.

As far as I understand, in the United States it is common to have exercises from a textbook, etc… so that you cannot really take the course without buying the chosen textbook.

My experience is that US textbooks are cheaper than the ones offered in Holland. We used English textbooks a lot in college and the cheapest way to get the books was through Amazon, even with the high shipping costs.

@ribbondancer

Excellent question. I was always SUPER annoyed when the professor of the class I was taking would use the textbook he/she WROTE in their class – talk about milking the cow (or however you want to say it).

‘Book people’ often change one or two paragraphs and sell it as a new addition – complete rip-off. As if we don’t pay the school enough for tuition and room/board … textbooks can top out at over $1500 a semester! WHERE IS THE JUSTICE?

I saw this really awesome bumper sticker the other day:
DROP TUITION, NOT BOMBS (look at it HERE because I can’t embedd it)
I second that.

The few times we have used the Professor’s own books it was actually a lot cheaper for us. He or she would sell them at the price they paid the publisher. I’m pretty certain these were the cheapest courses I had, textbookwise.

[drpepper]

Interestingly and related to the teachers’ comments upthread who are trying to be conscientious about the pricing of the texts they select, some new federal legislation was passed stating in part: (link (.pdf):Suffolk County Community College - 404 - Page not Found )

‘(1) COLLEGE TEXTBOOK PRICING INFORMATION- When a publisher provides a faculty member or other person or adopting entity in charge of selecting course materials at an institution of higher education receiving Federal financial assistance with information regarding a college textbook or supplemental material, the publisher shall include, with any such information and in writing (which may include electronic communications), the following:

‘(A) The price at which the publisher would make the college textbook or supplemental material available to the bookstore on the campus of, or otherwise associated with, such institution of higher education and, if available, the price at which the publisher makes the college textbook or supplemental material available to the public.

‘(B) The copyright dates of the three previous editions of such college textbook, if any. ‘(C) A description of the substantial content revisions made between the current edition of the college textbook or supplemental material and the previous edition, if any.

‘(D)(i) Whether the college textbook or supplemental material is available in any other format, including paperback and unbound; and
‘(ii) for each other format of the college textbook or supplemental material, the price at which the publisher would make the college textbook or supplemental material in the other format available to the bookstore on the campus of, or otherwise associated with, such institution of higher education and, if available, the price at which the publisher makes such other format of the college textbook or supplemental material available to the public.
‘(2) UNBUNDLING OF COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS FROM SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS- A publisher that sells a college textbook and any supplemental material accompanying such college textbook as a single bundle shall also make available the college textbook and each supplemental material as separate and unbundled items, each separately priced.
‘(3) CUSTOM TEXTBOOKS- To the maximum extent practicable, a publisher shall provide the information required under this subsection with respect to the development and provision of custom textbooks.

If I understand correctly I believe this was actually passed and went into effect July 1 of this year. It also requires more advance notice to students of the texts to be used (rather than, say, the week before classes begin). That alone should allow for a little more pricing efficiency in the market.

[drachillix]

@Kolga

When I choose textbooks, I do try very hard to be aware of the cost. But if the best textbook happens to also be the most expensive, tough - I’m trying to teach content here.

I would be very curious to see if someone could get a group of instructors to sit down and write an " open source" textbook on say intro calculus. And offer it up for $5 would the academic world Embrace it, or would it turn into a giant legal pissing match in a few years.

[drachillix]

@Gedd

I imagine the universities get a nice cut of the profits. Besides the fact that the publishers know that the students have to buy them. Like Squink pointed out, they are required goods. They are also written by money sucking people who like to prey on poor students

Yes, I believe they call them “graduates” or “alumni”… Something like that.

[Indistinguishable]

@BlinkingDuck

Mark my words…but what will happen in the future is that using Calculus as an example…is that a Calculus textbook will go online as part of a colaborative effort amongst math faculty/math peeps and so will evolve into a kick ass Calculus book that will be essentially free. Much like ‘R’ is for social statistics software.

I think this is the way of the future and the textbook publishers will howl!

I agree (at least for this particular example, certainly). But it does seem to be a rather slowly arriving future…

[Jragon]

@footballisplayedwithyourfeet

The few times we have used the Professor’s own books it was actually a lot cheaper for us. He or she would sell them at the price they paid the publisher. I’m pretty certain these were the cheapest courses I had, textbookwise.

This has been my experience as well; however, the English department is a different story. At my college there is a textbook for all low level English courses, there is a book called the “student guide” that is written by the English faculty and changes every semester and is required by the department to be a required text for each low level course in order to generate revenue. What’s the difference between the semesters? They rearrange the chapters, they even have a log of chapters not in the current edition that they will rotate in and out depending on which way the winds shifted that semester. Yes, the English department at my university has turned advancement of understanding of English composition into the academic equivalent of buying booster packs for Magic: The Gathering.

[DrCube]

I just don’t see the need for most new textbooks at all.

A) When I was in college (up until last year), the engineering department literally only used the textbooks for homework and study problems. All the necessary conceptual material was given to us in slides or notes which supplemented the lecture. It’s a good thing my school rents textbooks to undergrads at $7 per semester hour regardless of how many texts are assigned. The only classes I can recall actually reading the text were Ethics and Literature, and we only read a small minority of the text in Lit.

So my first point is that textbooks aren’t as necessary as publishers think. In fact, I mostly could have gotten by with a few loose-leaf pages with study problems on them for each class.

B) Cutting edge techniques aren’t really taught from textbooks, even in grad school. So where is the need for the up-to-date textbooks? Like Hari Seldon said, most math and a lot of science classes could use 50+ year old texts with no problem. I learned Linear Algebra and Electromagnetics from books written in the 40s and 50s. So what fields really need the brand-new books? In my experience, not literature, physics, chemistry, math, engineering, music or writing.

At first, it seems like new software might necessitate newer textbooks, such as when I took RF Design and the whole class was spent using Ansoft Designer. But in every case, the textbook was useless and we learned from the teacher and online tutorials for the software. This is how I learned to use Excel, MATLAB, PSpice, et cetera. So software might be one of the excuses for printing updated textbooks, but in reality those texts just aren’t needed.

In fact, that’s my verdict, based on years of experience in college. 99% of textbooks just aren’t necessary. The reason they are expensive is the “captive market” idea, plus the plain pig-headed-ness of the publishers. The universities and professors may not be making money off the textbooks, but they are implicit in the racket regardless. If enough professors started using old and/or public domain texts or just printed off a bunch of homework problems instead of assigning textbooks, the whole racket would collapse in a few semesters. Textbooks are for the most part mandatory and unnecessary and that’s why everybody (except the publishers) agrees they cost too much.

[shiftless]

@Hari_Seldon

This has been a favorite rant of mine for years. First off, neither the instructor nor the university makes one cent from textbooks, so forget that argument. The authors do well, when the book is widely adopted but it is the publisher that makes out like a bandit. And makes sure there is new edition every year or so so used sales won’t cut into the market.

A favorite rant for me too! Years ago I taught algebra. Each year the publisher of the standard text book released a new version (I had no control over this) so that the new students had to buy new each year. Nobody would ever buy last year’s version because nobody knew what the difference was, so there was no market for used books. After I had collected a few years worth I compared them. Each year the publisher would drop 2 or 3 chapters on obscure topics and add a few new ones. The next year some of the older topics would reappear. The basic text remained exactly the same, same questions, same chapter numbers, everything. But because a particular version was “out of print” the school couldn’t reuse books.

Of course, the school should have chosen a standard book that didn’t change every year but why should the math department worry about that?

[BlinkingDuck]

@shiftless

@Hari_Seldon

This has been a favorite rant of mine for years. First off, neither the instructor nor the university makes one cent from textbooks, so forget that argument. The authors do well, when the book is widely adopted but it is the publisher that makes out like a bandit. And makes sure there is new edition every year or so so used sales won’t cut into the market.

A favorite rant for me too! Years ago I taught algebra. Each year the publisher of the standard text book released a new version (I had no control over this) so that the new students had to buy new each year. Nobody would ever buy last year’s version because nobody knew what the difference was, so there was no market for used books. After I had collected a few years worth I compared them. Each year the publisher would drop 2 or 3 chapters on obscure topics and add a few new ones. The next year some of the older topics would reappear. The basic text remained exactly the same, same questions, same chapter numbers, everything. But because a particular version was “out of print” the school couldn’t reuse books.

Of course, the school should have chosen a standard book that didn’t change every year but why should the math department worry about that?

When I taught college math, I had the rep of being very open to using older version textbooks. I would actually look at the differences while doing my plan nad note them for different versions. Many times there was no difference.

The bookstore hated this and I, more than once, faced their displeasure…but the students were really good at selling textbooks to each other without middlemen.

[Kolga]

I am perfectly willing to grant that there are a lot of disciplines in which new textbooks seem unnecessary. However, in the field of psychology, new research is being done all the time. I’m CONSTANTLY bringing reprints from journal articles to class to talk about newer research that expands or clarifies older research and concepts, and students are also always talking about news stories or magazine articles they read about a newly-published research study. So, in my field, there actually is a need for new editions to incorporate the latest research with the older information.

Like I said, I do NOT get kickbacks from publishers, I did not write the textbooks I use, and our CC does not get huge amounts of money from our bookstore, so I am baffled to understand why people continue to insist that textbooks are a scam perpetuated by collusion between the professors, universities, and publishers.

The PUBLISHERS dictate new edition publication dates. The non-author PROFESSORS do not, nor do the universities/colleges or their bookstores.

[OldGuy]

@ribbondancer

Excellent question. I was always SUPER annoyed when the professor of the class I was taking would use the textbook he/she WROTE in their class – talk about milking the cow (or however you want to say it).

Why would you think that a professor didn’t believe his/her text book was the best available in some respects – or at least as good as others. Why else would they have written it. And recall the “best” text could well vary by class. Wouldn’t the professor’s text be geared towards his/her class?

[Chronos]

And of course, all the standard textbooks have authors, too. I’d have to imagine that when David Griffith teaches E&M (or quantum mechanics or particle physics) he uses his own book, for instance. But then, everyone who teaches undergraduate E&M uses Griffith’s book.

[Jragon]

@Jragon

@footballisplayedwithyourfeet

The few times we have used the Professor’s own books it was actually a lot cheaper for us. He or she would sell them at the price they paid the publisher. I’m pretty certain these were the cheapest courses I had, textbookwise.

This has been my experience as well; however, the English department is a different story. At my college there is a textbook for all low level English courses, there is a book called the “student guide” that is written by the English faculty and changes every semester and is required by the department to be a required text for each low level course in order to generate revenue. What’s the difference between the semesters? They rearrange the chapters, they even have a log of chapters not in the current edition that they will rotate in and out depending on which way the winds shifted that semester. Yes, the English department at my university has turned advancement of understanding of English composition into the academic equivalent of buying booster packs for Magic: The Gathering.

Breaking news, I just found another thing my English department does. I had to annotate a speech by Dr. King for class, I asked if I could just print out the speech and annotate that because I’m a tad squeamish about writing in books.

The answer? Absolutely not. Why? Because otherwise people will sell it used and the English department will be out money next semester. Lovely, that.

[JoelUpchurch]

There is an article about this topic in the Freakonomics blog. There is a new federal law on textbook pricing.

on the institution’s Internet course schedule and in a manner of the institution’s choosing, the International Standard Book Number and retail price information of required and recommended college textbooks and supplemental materials for each course listed in the institution’s course schedule …

There is also provisions for edition churn to destroy the market for used textbooks.

The new law contains a gentle nudge which is aimed at making edition churn more embarrassing. Publishers must provide faculty members (or any “entity in charge of selecting course materials”) with the copyright dates of the three previous edition of the textbook together with a “description of the substantial content revisions made between the current edition of the college textbook or supplemental material and the previous edition, if any.”

The complete article is here:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/is-your-university-complying-with-the-new-textbook-law/#more-42017

[septimus]

Though not in school I needed some textbooks and bought them in Bangkok, in Prentice-Hall paperbacks with the inscription:

This edition may be sold only in those countries to which it is consigned by Prentice-Hall International. It is not to be re-exported and it is not for sale in the U.S.A., Mexico, or Canada.

(I did “re-export” the books to California and use them there – did I break the law?)

A trip across the Pacific just to buy some books wouldn’t be cost-effective (especially since only a few titles will be available). Pay for the trip by doing other things while you’re in Bangkok. Why not … have a root canal!

[toxo]

I always believed that the college text book market was quite a racket. When I was in college I was lucky enough to a have a sister that worked for a publisher and she could get books at a 15% discount off of the wholesale price. I remember sending her my list of books and at the end of the year selling them back to the campus book store at a profit from what I originally paid. Believe me, it was a whole lot more than the 15% discount. If there wasn’t a limit as to how much my sister could buy, I would have bought stacks of the most expensive books just to sell back and make money.
When my kids are old enough for college, I’ll tell them they should work out a book sharing deal with classmates. In some classes,I never had a need to constantly have a text book handy and even skipped buying them for a couple of courses. Never hurt my academic results.

[GESancMan]

@toxo

I always believed that the college text book market was quite a racket. When I was in college I was lucky enough to a have a sister that worked for a publisher and she could get books at a 15% discount off of the wholesale price. I remember sending her my list of books and at the end of the year selling them back to the campus book store at a profit from what I originally paid. Believe me, it was a whole lot more than the 15% discount. If there wasn’t a limit as to how much my sister could buy, I would have bought stacks of the most expensive books just to sell back and make money.
When my kids are old enough for college, I’ll tell them they should work out a book sharing deal with classmates. In some classes,I never had a need to constantly have a text book handy and even skipped buying them for a couple of courses. Never hurt my academic results.

I’m about to start my fourth year at Portland State University (second as a grad student), and I’ve never spent a dime at the school’s bookstore. I do sell them all my books, though. Usually the price of a new book at Amazon is comparable to the used cost at the PSU bookstore, and of course used books can be had at Amazon for a lot cheaper.

[GreasyJack]

A poli sci professor I had once told us a story once about one reason why textbooks are so expensive. He was co-writing a 100 level political science textbook and when you wanted to have a stock illustration of some sort, you just left space on the page and wrote in what you wanted and the publisher would insert a an illustration they were sure they had the rights to. Well, so the book comes out and in a box captioned “German Economist Max Weber” is a picture of the painter Max Weber. The entire run of has to be destroyed and they have to reprint the whole thing.

[Cyberhwk]

@GESancMan

I’m about to start my fourth year at Portland State University (second as a grad student), and I’ve never spent a dime at the school’s bookstore. I do sell them all my books, though. Usually the price of a new book at Amazon is comparable to the used cost at the PSU bookstore, and of course used books can be had at Amazon for a lot cheaper.

I had a friend that found some of them so cheap off of Half.com she actually made a PROFIT selling them back to the book store.

My personal best/worst was a Music Lit class:
[ul]
[li]New Edition of Text Book: $160[/li][li]Two Books of corresponding Scores: $35 each.[/li][li]Two 6-CD sets of corresponding music: $30 each.*[/li][/ul]
One class. $290 in books. Class was canceled the next semester so you couldn’t sell the books back.

*Prof even said, “I know they’re expensive. If you can’t afford them, I can’t SAY but I’d just POINT OUT: blank CDs are cheap and some of you have computers…”