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Don't Take Notes In the Bookstore
mikesd81 writes "The Harvard Crimson reports that the Harvard Coop asked Jarret A. Zafran to leave the store after writing down the prices of six books required for a junior Social Studies tutorial. The apparent new policy could be a response to Crimsonreading.org, an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers. The Coop claims the ISBN identification numbers in books are their intellectual property. Crimson Reading disagrees. 'We don't think the Coop owns copyright on this information that should be available to students,' said Tom D. Hadfield, co-creator of the site. The student paper reports that an unnamed intellectual property lawyer agreed with Crimson Reading's position."
So in effect, ISBN's are owned by no one except for the distributing and maintaining body.
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ISBNs are nobody's intellectual property apart from the ISO. It's an international standard described by ISO TC 46/SC 9.
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Coop members also get a profit share at the end of the year. And the bookstore part of the Coop is already associated with Barnes & Noble, as are 80% of college bookstores. (I don't think "owned" is the right phrase, I don't know how the relationship works.) But yeah, there are students on the Coop board who should probably be alerted to this so they can fight it.
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ISBNs on books are the IP of The US ISBN Agency, and since they have the sole authority in the U.S. to issue ISBNs, it's a bit of a stretch (read: LIE) for any other legal entity to claim that the ISBN printed on the book are their IP.
If you prefer, you can ask The National Information Standards Organization, which will tell you the for country X it's organization Y. For instance, Canadians will use their own agency.
The desire to destroy competition is alive and well. Let's hope this is one attempt which fails miserably.
University co-op stores are frequented by more than just students. While you can get everything you want now from Amazon, such university co-ops let you browse the type of obscure specialist literature that B & N or Borders don't stock.
...it is recirculated once the book goes out of print; many books have the same ISBN but only one in print book at a time can use it. One minor correction, from ISBN.org, I found: ISBN CAN NEVER BE REUSED: Once an ISBN is assigned to a title, it CANNOT BE REASSIGNED even if the title goes out of print. In addition to being an order fulfillment tool, the ISBN is a bibliographic element in cataloging. It is printed on catalog cards, in catalogs and entered in national and international databases. So it always has to be the same book, it's never 'recycled.'My work here is dung.
Here's another tip, don't buy textbooks until 2 or 3 weeks in when you're sure you're actually going to need it for the class. Many professors test from their lecture notes which they often give out in class. Just because they say it's required doesn't mean you actually need it. I found that if I just paid attention in class, I did well. The only books I bought are actually useful books which I still refer to from time to time.
Also, you might not need that exact book. Calculus hasn't changed recently, so any calculus book ought to suffice to teach you Calculus. Absolutely no reason to buy a new edition.
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I strongly suggest that you check out ISBNDB, which is an online database of ISBN numbers. You wouldn't have to go look up numbers in-person, thereby removing any possible blame from yourselves.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Coop attempted to challenge the ISBNDB, however....
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Intellectual property isn't a concept in the law in and of itself, the term is really more a way to spread nebulous FUD and also a convenience term to collectively speak about legal concepts that are separate but all deal with the notion that people can own ideas.
So what form of intellectual property exactly does the bookstore think the numbers fall under?/P>
They're not copyrighted. Even under modern, highly stretched definitions of creative works you can't copyright a number like that. What original expression of an idea does it represent? Not that someone wouldn't try it, people have even tried making claims as stupid as that the price of their merchandise is copyrighted.
They're not a trade secret. The numbers are printed right there on the book.
They're not a trademark. When someone sees "978-0-7356-1879-4" they don't think of this particular bookstore, which is good because that would make it really hard for other stores to sell the same book. Intel did try to trademark the number "486" and failed, which is why they started naming all their chips "Pentium" instead.
And, they're not patented. Even given the level of rubber-stamping the Patent Office does, I don't think "A system for designating a book with the number 978-0-7356-1879-4" would cut it. Maybe if you added "on the Internet" in there somewhere...
ISBNs are assigned in blocks to publisher's by a country's ISBN agency; the ISBN itself does not 'belong' to the publisher, it belongs to the International Standard Book Number Agency, although the publisher chooses which book to designate by each ISBN in the block it has been assigned. Publishers are not required to assign ISBNs to books; however, many retailers will decline to stock books that do not have an ISBN.
The laws regarding purchasing the international copy of a book (international copies of the same book which have different ISBN numbers and are technically not to allowed to be sold in US) are a bit murkey. But it appears that you can, indeed, get those books legally.
A blurb from a rather lengthy reply on Google Answers: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=295219
"The current state of US law is that international versions of textbooks that are lawfully manufactured under the authorization of the copyright holder can be legally imported by a party that has acquired them outside of the US, for subsequent resale within the US. While the copyright holder can require that their license holders (the international printers) do not themselves ship manufactured copies directly for public distribution in the US without prior consent, the copyright holder cannot prevent a party from purchasing lawfully manufactured copies outside the US, and importing them into the US for sale or otherwise disposal."
Check out http://firstandsecond.com/
For the opportunists amongst you, this does present an arbitrage opportunity to buy books abroad and resell them in US, though it is my understanding that companies like Amazon and EBAY have provisions against resale of such books.
Look, regardless of what you think about "Patents, copyrights, and trademarks" (and whether they "mean something"), the term "intellectual property" is useful for the same reason most superset terms are useful. Sometimes, you want to refer to "Patents, copyrights, and trademarks" altogether, and the term "intellectual property" or "IP" saves you the effort. I don't see how it creates FUD any more than the term "significant other" is FUD.
In fact, that's a great example of how your post (and everyone who says the same thing) appears to me. It's like you said: I agree with RMS on the topic of the term "significant other".
It's a FUD term that relationship advisors and social spiders ( likethe embarrassingly pathetic Miss Manners) use to justify empty threats and pump-and-dump litigation.
Boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance, fiancee, wife, and husband mean something. "Significant other" is the high-ranking psychologist's buzz word of the year. I agree that "intellectual property in ISBN numbers", let alone by a BOOKSTORE, is ridiculous, but I don't understand the objection to the term IP.
(Incidentally, for my part, I wish people would distinguish "intellectual works" -- the writing, or software, or movie -- from "intellectual property" -- the legal rights related to such works, but that's a separate matter.)
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"Because its a prereq for General Chem. 1 and 2, we use the first three chapters of the textbook for that course."
...
Every major publisher, including (probably) the publisher of the book you use, offers a "custom printing service". They would gladly print just those three chapters and nothing else, or whatever scheme you can come up with -- chapters 1-3, 6, 10 and 13, etc etc.
Although I can't speak for every college bookstore in the US, I certainly can speak for the one I work for. We don't pay "pennies on the dollar" for used books. For most of the school semester, we buy the books for a third-party used book dealer (such as Follet, MBS, and the like) and collect a 10% commission. However, during the last 2 weeks of any given semester and the first week of any given semester, if we know a book has been adopted for the coming term we pay 50% of new price (even on a used book). The key here is we have to know it's adopted for use -- we ask the professors at least 3 months before the start of the semester for their book lists. Every single semester we end up with super late adoptions -- sometimes edging into the midterms.
International editions _do_ sacrifice quality. The material is there, but there's no mistaking an international book. Hell, I've bought back copies that are quite plainly photocopies of the original text -- shadow effects on the edge of a page. And personally I'm all for students saving a buck, but mark my words -- within 10 years there won't be an "international edition" anymore. The publishers know those books are coming back into the states and aren't really happy about it, and moves are being made to curtail that particular practice.
So, although it's easy to blame the bookstore, in most cases the professor is the one making choices as to what book is used in their classes (at least, one should hope so). You are admittedly guilty of requiring your students to get the $180 package when they only need a small part of that book and even though you have the means to acquire a better deal for them, you don't. Maybe because you didn't know about the option, maybe because your higher ed book rep is a snake, maybe because you don't care.
Again, I can only speak for my store, but I know our average margin on both new and used books, and we're a fairly large school -- over 30,000 undergrads -- I'm not eating steak. The clothing and gifts people, though
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I, along with just about everyone I know at MIT, go to the Coop (Harvard/MIT Cooperative) at the start of every term, head over to the textbooks and copy down all the information and prices we need right in front of whoever is working there. I just did so two weeks ago, carrying a bag from Quantum Books (a bookstore next door with sometimes cheaper textbooks) too. It doesn't make any sense for them to care about getting the books somewhere else since it's a cooperative anyway. Something doesn't seem right here.
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Seriously. (Other than the acetaminophen for overnight).
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I think someone is seriously angry here. Angry, as in: not having a full understanding of what's really going on at College Bookstores and making us out as Public Enemy Number One.
As the owner of a small, privately owned (as in by me) College Bookstore (annual gross sales around $550,000/year) There are a few things I would like to point out. Before I do, let me insert the following caveats:
1) The principles upon which I choose to run my store are not necessarily how all bookstores do so (let alone those in my category of "small" and "privately owned"). Still, my comments are probably a good a place as any to start forming an understanding of College Bookstore practices.
2) I do actually care about customer service. However, I may not necessarily define the student who walks into the store with the intent of buying all his/her books elsewhere as a customer.
3) I do understand that owning a business and having it be successful in the long run is as much about relationship building (with customers and the institutions we serve) as it is about economic viability. Successful businesses, which are not a monopoly or government sponsored in some way, usually understand this.
4) I would like to hope I understand (there are those that may disagree with me) that the College Textbook market is rapidly evolving, principally due to: 1)the internet 2)rising textbook prices 3)rising tuition costs and 4)the way students are learning.
Having prefaced my remarks, I have few things to say:
I am not a rich man (at least by my standards) and neither are most of the students who attend the College I service: My annual salary is in the low 50's, which I think is reasonable considering I am the owner. I work about 50 hours a week outside of Fall and Spring Buying season (where I work 70 hours per week).
I know textbooks are typically very expensive. Bookstore profit margins on textbooks typically range from 20 to 25%. So to the extent that we sell books does in some way make us "part of the problem." We do try to get our hands on as many books as we can, because they cost us less and we can sell them for less. If a book is being used again for a class and it's not moving into a new edition we'll usually pay the student 1/2 our selling price for the book. This is an industry standard practice, so I don't really know where the whole "pennies on the dollar thing comes from."
Maybe the disenchanted community college instructor is referring to scenarios where students are selling back books that aren't being used again. These books are sold to wholesalers, who then pay us what we paid the student for the book (typically 5 to 35% of the new value of the books, depending on a variety of factors) plus a 20% commission. These books then sit in a massive warehouse, until a store like ours calls them to buy the book and sell in in their store, where it gets sold again as a used book. Because publishers cannot, for the most part, do EULAs with their new books, they understandably hate this practice and try to (my opinion) push out new editions as fast as they can get away with.
It's also possible the student sold back the book at a wholesale price and then *after the students sold them* we get an order for the book to be used. We encourage faculty to submit orders early because it allows us to buy back more books at 1/2 sale value and it allows us to get more used copies, but like the saying goes: you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink....
Our store (like almost all others) sells books according to what the faculty tell us to sell and what kind of book it is (e.g., required, recommended or optional). This doesn't always mean the book actually gets used or is really needed for the class (as any sophomore or senior will tell you) but it is *what we were told to list the book as* by an instructor or department chair. We find the books that sell the best meet one of more of
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