New Textbook Regulations Promise To Lower Prices

Textbook costs can pack a pretty hard punch to the cash-strapped college student. Luckily, there is help in sight; the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 -- recently in effect -- will, in theory, lower textbook prices.

The Albany Times Union reports on how the relationship between textbook publishers and colleges will change:

Publishers are now required to disclose prices and revision information when marketing textbooks to professors, which will allow them to choose lower-cost options. Publishers now are required to offer all of the items in textbook bundles for sale separately so students won't be forced to pay for CDs or passcodes they don't need. Colleges are now also encouraged to provide the list of assigned textbooks for each course so students can shop around for the best deal.

Independent of the bill, many companies are finding ways to help offset the costs of school books. Onward State, the Pennsylvania State University blog, recently reported that Amazon.com is offering its Amazon Prime program to anyone with an .edu email address. The offer allows the subscriber to order books with free two-day shipping so that purchases can be made only when his or her schedule is set.

Textbook rental services are also cropping up across the internet. Mashable.com lists BookSwim and Books Free as two examples of locations for subscription based book rental, a cheaper option than buying. In fact, some of the rental services, like Chegg and BookRenter, donate to charity on the renter's behalf.

What do you think? How do you cope with textbook costs? Weigh in below.

Comments

[NJShopGirl]

04:48 AM on 07/23/2010

The easiest way to cope is to order over the internet. Last semester I saved over $700 by buying books after getting the pared down list from the professors.

Even then, textbooks are too darn expensive.

[Kiabell04]

02:15 AM on 07/23/2010

This needs to happen right now. I can easily spend nearly $400 buck on books per semester. And that's not a full load either!

[Courtney Cobbs]

05:33 PM on 07/22/2010

I love how my school displays the ISBN numbers of the books on the bookstore's website.
I use campusbookrentals.com and they have some pretty good prices and have never given me any trouble.

I would love to be able to spend my financial aid money online and just show receipts/invoices of my purchases. I know the bookstores are making a killing off of financial aid money because if you're dependent on financial aid to buy books, you pretty much HAVE to go to the bookstore. I save up my money to buy my books by myself and then reimburse myself once I get my refund check.

E-books are okay but I get a headache after looking at a computer screen for too long.
With that said, let me get back to this paper for my class.

[bessielil]

04:38 PM on 07/22/2010

I'd like to weigh in since I teach at a state college. Every semester two or more sales reps visit depts with lunch and free books for us to peruse. We can keep them. (Don't get me started on the ethics of professors stocking up on books they'll never refer to and then selling them to roaming 2nd hand book dealers who come on campus with pockets full of cash. I've yet to work at a college that addresses this.) With Bedford Martin and Pearson, we always have the option break up their bundle. There's never time to use the on line stuff and the added cost is horrific. Mindful of costs to the student, I'm always asking for comp. readers without 'the architecture', meaning recycled observations about writing that I can teach or are available on line. Also, when picking out a style manual that a student really should keep for the whole four years, I always get the least expensive. Unless it's a highly technical book with information in constant flux, this changing editions stuff is certainly scamish. For this fall semester I went into a publisher's data base to create my own book of essays, so everything in it will be used. I kept it to under $30. The college book store is going to charge close to $38 for it. I think the markup is too high at 25%. In a few years I bet we all use iPads.

[bwright85]

04:04 PM on 07/22/2010

Umm, this is fine and all but what I really want to see changed is the buyback process. When I was in college I spent sometimes almost 200 dollars on a book and then at the end of the semester would get like 30 bucks back for it. WTH?

[dmgoss]

06:03 PM on 07/22/2010

Yeah, I resold the most current version of a Geology text that had just that year been revised by the head of my college's Earth Science's dept... They gave me about a fifth of what I had paid for it brand new, claiming they weren't "sure if they'd be using it again"!

[Yam716]

03:56 PM on 07/22/2010

I stopped buying books after freshman year when I realized that the book from the year before only had a few changes :-|

If my friend had the book, I just got a copy of the chapters we needed. Saved about $600 a semester

[WFWS]

03:42 PM on 07/22/2010

I bet there's money in textbooks, and plenty of room for innovation and competition. I say that because one of the new textbook rental places just raised a huge bucket of capital in a market that's supposedly hard for this kind of money.
Its a scam, and one that a bit of pressure would go along way. I wonder why colleges keep buying new editions as if last year's books were somehow obsolete and useless. This transfers money from college students to book publishers. I bet there's a way to avoid this.

Renting is a good idea too, but think of how much they get for renting a second hand book. Why can I rent videos for $9/month at Netscape, but a textbook costs almost half of its retail price for just 12 weeks? Those rental companies are making a huge profit, and its transfering money from college students to rental companies.

I bet a student union or co-op could capture some of that money, and buy books with student and alumni funds, rent them, and STOP buying new editions every year. That would be transfering money from students, to, well, students. Educators would have to cooperate on selecting texts..

Capitalism isn't always the only way to buy and sell things.
Just saying.

[Rose Morris]

04:26 PM on 07/22/2010

I'll tell you why we keep having to go to new editions, often over our very loud objections. College bookstores buy only a certain number of new books and depend on buy backs (at a fraction of the original cost so they can make another profit off the books) to get a supply of used books. But, bookstores buy back only so many books, and they never keep new books that don't sell in a semester (on such-and-such a date they're shipped back to the publishers, which is stupid). Not everyone sells back his/her books, and eventually, bookstores don't have enough used books for incoming students. The problem lies with the fact that virtually all publishers go to new textbook editions every 3 years now TO MAKE MONEY, and when they do so, most of them won't ship earlier editions from their warehouses. Honest salesmen will tell you that profit often is the only reason textbooks are updated. And, at some point, since they aren't printing earlier editions any more, publishers know faculty will go with the new one or be forced to choose another book. Most of us aren't crazy about having to change textbooks every three years, but at some point, we don't have a choice.

[bessielil]

04:49 PM on 07/22/2010

College bookstores also might be doing themselves in. I'm told that the agreement our campus store has with the publishers is a 25% markup on any new book. Now that Amazon and other on line sources do sell the edition you likely want to keep using, the bookstores...and perhaps the publishers...are their own enemies. With freshman comp, however, rather than upper level courses for a major, it is important to keep changing the material and texts because so many bogus 'student' papers appear on line to be 'shared'. That's why I change texts so often.

[CelebP]

03:40 PM on 07/22/2010

When I was a pre-med major I'd spend atleast 1,000 a year for books. Oh the bad memories.....

[formerroadie]

03:32 PM on 07/22/2010

It's about time. The re-publication of text books is insane and "editions" drive me nuts. I do think they need to remain tangible books. There is something totally impersonal and rather unconnected about having electronic books. Books you can feel and smell and see on a shelf... electronic ones... not so much. The textbook industry is a rather insidious industry that preys on college students.

[Chuck1Rogers]

03:09 PM on 07/22/2010

everyone knows that textbook costs are the true hidden conspiracy - much bigger and more insidious than secret UFOs at area 51...... Algebra hasn't changed in a few years yet you can't buy last semesters' algebra book.. Somebody is making huge amounts of profit at the expense of education... I love it when you are forced to buy your professors' self-published book at $225 a pop...

[YourMoralCompass]

02:16 PM on 07/22/2010

Why are we still printing things again?

[formerroadie]

03:32 PM on 07/22/2010

Because many of us like to feel, smell, and see a book.

[WFWS]

03:44 PM on 07/22/2010

I like books too. But its an expensive habit, and we shouldnt force students to participate. If you can afford to sniff the pages, go for it. But lets create some alternatives for the rest of us. I'd be happy to download the friggin chapters as I need them.
I'll sniff my collection of vinyl albums. Oh yeah..

[JackDharma]

12:05 PM on 07/23/2010

We print books because they are the perfect format for reading. Someone recently observed that "computer reading" is similar to reading from ancient scrolls--tedious, awkward, time-consuming. That's why books were such a welcome improvement over the scrolls. Just because something is electronic doesn't mean it's better, or even nearly as good.
--Jack
http://open.salon.com/blog/jack_dharma/2010/07/12/living_with_grandads_technology