Your Humble Blogger stumbled on to a topic of substantial personal interest for a few Gentle Readers, and although the discussion was fruitful, it degenerated to the point where I would be inclined to let it lie. We were, if you’ve been away, talking about college textbook prices. Now, Jeff (among other Gentle Readers) is a prof who is responsible for choosing textbooks for his students. david is a non-traditional student at a commuter college. Lisa (who doesn’t comment nearly enough for my tastes) works for a publisher of high school texts, engaged precisely in the update/new-edition part of the business. And Michael is a publisher whose smallish catalogue of books includes books designed to be used as college texts, and therefore could be said to have his business relying on the college text market. As for Your Humble Blogger, well, I have spent a few years in an office that dealt with students, assigned readings, and texts. Among our Gentle Readers we also have people with some experience as academic librarians (in various capacities), and I hope that some of my friends who have experience as secretaries or office managers in academia continue to read, although I haven’t heard from them for a while (sniff). So rather than let the thing lie, as is (as I said) my inclination, I think I’ll press on.
Before I do, though, I should say that I happen to know all of these people, and I happen to know that all of them are not only nice people, but are committed to education, both in the abstract and in the specific. All of them (I opine) could be making more money (or some money) in some other enterprise. I don’t make the claim that my Gentle Readers really represent the full spectrum of the various players in the academic market. Nor do I make the claim that my Gentle Readers are anything particularly special. I suspect that most of the individuals who play their various roles in the textbook market do so with good intentions and a commitment to education. Not everybody—from my observation there are people making policy for, oh, Else*cough* and *cough*son, sorry about that, something in my throat, who are profit maximizers and care nothing about education or knowledge. But on the whole, what I find interesting about this failed market is that even with all the will in the world, the incentives make people do things that appear crazy, and everybody gets screwed. That’s why I want to keep going, despite the temptation to high tempers.
OK. Since Michael declined to actually make the specific argument in question, I will try to make it for him, and I hope I will get it more or less right. I will use nice small numbers, partly to make things easier for myself, and partly to describe the situation of somebody like Michael. We can move on from there. Anyway, let’s say a small house gets a nice text ready for publishing and prints, optimistically, three thousand copies. The first year, through reasonable marketing efforts, we get it adopted at forty colleges or so, and I actually sell a thousand copies (after returns and all, which is another aspect of the wacky market, but we don’t need to get into it here at the moment). The book goes over pretty well, and the next year I get more profs to order it, say, a total of fifty. Of course, half the students (more or less) have sold their books back to the bookstore. With a 25% increase, we could estimate 1,250 students will buy the book, but then 500 of those will buy a used copy, so I will actually sell 750 this year. That’s not bad, I’ve sold out more than half my run, and at this point perhaps I’m coming close to a profit (I know, there’s a lot more to a profit than that. It’s an illustration).
Year three, and I doubt we’ll get more profs to order this two-year-old book, but perhaps we’ll remain stable at 1,250 students. The used-book market has 625 copies, so I will probably sell around 625, leaving me with only 675 left over. Now I have to start thinking about next year. Maybe there’s a shiny new text from a competing house, and I will drop to a thousand students, with 625 used-book copies on the market, and I can cover the rest with my stock. On the other hand, maybe I can get another few courses to adopt it, despite its age, and I will need to order another run. Whatever I do, I won’t sell more than a few hundred new books in year four. And since a small run of books will be more expensive (and three years of inflation will also make it more expensive), my profit on those texts will be very small. Raising the price presumably pushes more trade to the used books, and besides, we would rather not raise the price as high prices are a barrier for the students. The returns are going to keep diminishing, though. Frankly, it’s not worth keeping this title in print; we’ll be selling at a loss, what with the cost of storage, and taxes on inventory and all.
On the other hand, if we can put out a joke-update, with a shiny new cover and copyright date, it’ll both hurt the used-book market and make it easier to market (get reviews, get people’s attention at conferences, etc.), and we might be able to print another three thousand and sell them, with the same numbers as we had before. Or we could bundle it with a stupid workbook or a useless CDR. It’ll keep the book in print, and although the first year of students will have to pay new-book prices (or use the library or share or whatever), the alternative is to let the book go out of print and that’s one fewer option for the prof. It seems silly to make a second edition without a serious update, but the subject matter of the book hasn’t actually changed in four years, and we like the book and would like to keep it in print.
Now, there are a lot of reasons why this doesn’t scale up to Mc*cough* Hill. For one thing, having massive capital to draw on means that a big house can make bigger initial runs, and even with the tax on inventory, that should shift the break-even point further out. Also, second and third runs will be bigger, too, which also shifts the break-even point on the first edition. There are other economies of scale in marketing, in standardization, in warehousing, even in the intellectual property end. Still, there may well come a point where the second edition of a good text is no longer making money due primarily to cheaper competition from the used-book market, and the choices are essentially (a) let the book go out of print, (2) keep printing and selling the book at a loss, (iii) put out a joke new edition with a shiny new cover, or (last) invest in an actual upgrade with a lot of new content. That last one seems preferable prima facie, but when the book is on, say, abstract algebra, and it was a good book, is there any actual benefit to fucking with it? And as far as barriers to education or even getting a degree, (iii) appears to Michael, and I must say to me as well to be preferable to (a), and I understand that (2) is not going to appeal.
This is not to say that I think that all companies are holding out until the last possible year to bring out the new editions. I think it’s quite likely that somebody in financial for Enormous Publishing House looked at the bump in revenues that follows a new edition and said “Why the hell are we waiting around for the revenues to dip to nothing before we get that bump? Let’s get that bump every three years!” But I have no evidence on that point. Neither, I must say, does the GAO, which put out a report that purported to discuss that matter. I think it’s worth studying, and I think it’s worth studying whether we want to institute policies at the federal level that might push that break-even point further out for all publishers, or just for smaller publishers. I don’t know that we do want to institute such policies, I should say, but I think it’s worth examining them, if we want to do something about the failed market. Again, I’m not sure if we do. We have lots of failed markets, and I don’t see us doing much about them. And, as irilyth points out, subsidies to prop up the ability of students to pay for, thus to prop up the cost of new or used books doesn’t seem to be the answer, at least long-term, as those costs raise the barrier, and thus the dependence on such subsidies.
I’ll also add here that I certainly understand the frustration of the prof who is forced to choose between just ordering the new edition of the text at greater expense to this year’s students (such expense being to the benefit, in large measure, of next year’s students), or attempting to bully the bookstore into buying up last year’s edition (at less profit for them), or arranging to have students buy the old edition on bookfinder (which they won’t, the lazy sonsabitches), or switching to a cheaper, perhaps inferior, book and writing another damn new syllabus. I also understand the frustration of the student who is in an irrational market, looking at the new expensive text and wondering why this year had to be the year when the students have to pay.
The whole system is screwy, and it is screwy in large part because books retain their value after use. If we did have a system where books disintegrated after a year, or where a student only leased the book from the publisher, or where resale was illegal, or anything like that, we would have a much more sane and much more annoying market. Nobody wants that. I’m not sure what people actually want. To look at the positive side, though, the problem, in essence, rises from the fact that we have lots of people attending colleges who can not really afford to spend $750 a year on textbooks. Those people are successes of our system, not failures.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
I had two texts, both for small obscure rarely-taught classes, which were long out of print. Both books were on material which essentially hadn’t changed in a century and wasn’t likely to change anytime soon (one was a history of astronomy up until about 1900, the other was the grammar of Old Norse); and both professors apologetically said “well, this is the only book there is, and I’m sorry it’s out of print. it was in print the last time I taught this course, about a decade ago.” It sounds like this is pretty much exactly the situation V is describing, and yeah, especially in the case of Gordon’s Old Norse Grammar (where it is the only book in English on the subject, it’s a real shame it’s not (or at least hadn’t been for some while as of 1998) in print.
In both cases, I used bookfinder (or some older incarnation thereof) and had great success. With the Norse text, I actually found two ridiculously cheap copies and sold one to a classmate for a small finders-fee profit.
The reason I didn’t use bookfinder (or Amazon) as a general rule was that the booklist for a course was generally never available until a few days before the class began, by which point taking shipping into account either the cost goes up by more than the potential savings or the time delay means you fall a week behind on your reading. I suppose one could try to second-guess the professor, research what was used last time the course was taught, and order those in advance, but that seems not only ambitious but risky.
Are there other approaches the thrifty student can take here that I’m missing?
As a general rule, I always bought new texts at the bookstore because I was fortunate enough that cost wasn’t an issue and I’m picky about condition–if it’s already hi-lit or margin-scrawled, I get very distracted while reading. I was surprised at V’s used-book turnover example numbers (I thought they were very high, based on my experiences at Swarthmore and Drexel), but he probably knows better than I do.
And having rambled on for far too long, the only other thing I can think of which is not only true but also will make V happy (though it sadly fails to advance the conversation) is to note that the Giants are ahead of the Dodgers in the standings.
Some scattershot comments here. First for Wayman, booklists should be available substantially before a few days before the class starts. The bookstore might not publicize it, but they know what books are required for the class. They badger the profs to get the lists in to them well in advance (I’d say about a month or so at least) so that they can order the books without ludicrous shipping charges. Now getting them to tell you what the booklist for a class is might be rather difficult, but going straight to the prof is very doable. I’ve occasionally gotten e-mails before classes start asking about books, and I’m always willing to tell people.
The used book numbers V quotes are within the realm of plausibility based on what I’ve seen. It actually bothers me as well, but for different reasons from the publishers. To me the book is not just something to be used for the class, but a reference to be used afterwards. If you sell it off, you can’t use it as a reference.
One thing I didn’t mention before which V. touched on and which I agree with is the difference between the big corporate publishing houses and the smaller presses. In addition to the fact that *cough*son is on my shit list for reasons which I’d be happy to discuss in a non-google-able forum, there’s a fundamental difference in underlying goals. From the academic’s point of view, the goal is to spread knowledge as widely as possible. Now having publishers make enough money to keep going is an important part of that, but it’s not the primary goal. The big publishing corporations on the other hand have a goal of making as much money as possible. With an academic journal, given the choice between placing copies in 5,000 libraries and having the publisher make $100,000 in profit or placing copies in 1000 libraries with the publisher getting a $200,000 profit, the academic viewpoint says the first is clearly superior, while the corporate viewpoint says the second is obviously the way to go. The latter viewpoint is dominant these days which is unfortunate from my perspective.
That being said, smaller publishers and professional society publishers tend not to go towards the maximizing profit extreme. For a course I’m teaching this spring (assuming I get enough people to sign up) I’m currently leaning towards using two books. I can actually have the students get both and not feel too guilty because they’re published by professional societies and the two combined are substantially cheaper than some of the books I’ve used for other courses.
I’m getting my used-book numbers from the pathetic GAO report that started the whole thing, so they are probably worthless. Still, I think around half the class selling back their book makes sense. It will be substantially less for book on Old Norse grammar or early astronomy, but for Intro Psych it’ll be far more.
And although I yield to no one in my disdain for the business practices at *cough*son, I should add that it is Else*cough* that is really setting up barriers—and I believe has had the entire editorial staff of two different journals resign as a result of those policies. We tend to talk about publishers as if they were all owned by those two, when in fact there are loads of associations, small houses, and university presses that are caught in the middle. The consolidation of textbooks into the Big Four has had predictable results, along with some unpredictable ones. That’s in addition to the effect of the bigger consolidation of general-interest publishers, which has affected the costs of printing, paper and binding for everybody.
Thanks,
-V.
“If we did have a system where books disintegrated after a year, or where a student only leased the book from the publisher…”
My apologies if this was covered in the comments to the previous post, but we already do have [the beginnings of] such a system:
Expiring ebooks in the classroom
Long story short: e-book format for textbooks, sold at 33% discount over print edition, can only be downloaded/installed on one computer, and expires at the end of the semester. So not only can’t you re-sell the textbook, you can’t keep it, either.
(the blog entry I link to above links to an article from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. I’ve got the article in electronic form and would be happy to forward it to any interested Gentle Readers.)
NOTE TO SELF: NEVER read slashdot comments. Uurgh.
What’s particularly entertaining about the leased e-book idea is that the price is 2/3 print cover price. This means it’s cheaper (probably) to buy the thing hard copy and resell it at the end of the semester. I sure hope the digital version has some serious value added…
By the way, please note my ambivalence about the whole thing. It would make economic sense (I think) for a publisher to lease books for, oh, what, thirty bucks a year? Just to make sure that the continuing revenue stream for the book stays at home. I would hate that system—but it would make texts cheaper for the poorer students, wouldn’t it?
Thanks,
-V.
“but it would make texts cheaper for the poorer students, wouldn’t it?”
Well, it would… for those poorer students who own a computer on which to install the textbook. For those students who rely on campus computer labs (where security restrictions probably prohibit downloading the book in the first place, and even if they don’t, the student has no guarantee of always being able to access the one computer on which s/he has downloaded the book)…they’re completely out of luck.
Oh, no, I meant leasing the actual books—pages, covers, like that. There might need to be some sort of security deposit, but generally, instead of having the choice of keeping it or selling it to the bookstore, you must return it to the publisher (through the bookstore? Through a NetFlix envelope? details…) at the end of the year. No computer needed.
Thanks,
-V.
3 reading habits i have that have made studying somewhat strange.
1) i can’t read books that have underlining, highlighting, or notations from other readers. similarly i can’t honestly assess or even enjoy movies after reading detailed reviews.
2) much easier to read electronic text than printed text. i have no explanation for this. the two leading theories are (a) time spent with each medium and (b) professional (over-)sensitivity to typeface and presentation. fear of enormously detailed authoritative BS also plays a part.
3) my short term and long term memory both suck. returning to school has shown that the memory failures are due to over-processing all material, leaving nothing recognizable of the author’s(‘) findings. the best i seem to be able to do is fight off a tendency to shape all things based on the last (unrelated) material consumed.
based on these however i have found that what i want, and what i wanted ten and twenty years ago, was lexis-nexis for everything. i hated reading books.
To go back to the used-book numbers for a moment—the NYT is reporting on a study by the Book Industry Study Group which, among other things, appears to say that 30% of textbook dollars are spent on used books, which if you figure new books cost twice the used figure would mean half the books purchased are used. I suspect I’ve got all that wrong, but the point is, it’s a lot. Also, the Times indicates that the study “does not include used-book sales by large national chain stores, like Barnes & Noble”; I don’t know if the college bookstores run by B&N get counted or not. If not, the number is probably worthless. The BISG doesn’t seem to have any mention of the study on its site, and I haven’t bothered googling for it, so take it all as TSOR.
Thanks,
-V.
I haven’t been following this discussion closely, so apologies if this has been mentioned before:
MIT’s Open Courseware project is providing a lot of their course materials (lecture notes, problem sets, etc) for free online. Not the same as textbooks, but seems related. See their undergrad EE/CS course listing for more info. (At least one of those classes apparently uses a couple of freely available online sources as textbooks, but it’s not clear to me whether it also has traditional printed textbooks.)
Gaaaah! Not the Open Courseware project! Oh, lordy, lordy. I suppose it’s all well-intentioned and stuff, but the cost of problem sets and lecture notes isn’t prohibitive. And it’s nice and all that some of the courses are using free online sources as texts, but I don’t know that they do that more than anyplace else.
The whole project was misleadingly presented as “free MIT course materials for everyone!”, and, you know, woo hoo. But if you Google for, oh, pretty nearly any topic there’s a college course on, you will find syllabi, lecture notes, problem sets, and all that peripheral stuff, along with a variety of materials posted in violation of copyright law, in about the same ratio as you will find at MIT.
Sorry to be snippy about it, but MIT got right up my nose with that.
Thanks,
-V.