I worked in a community college bookstore for five years. I ran the textbook department. Every semester I dealt with over 800 titles, with about half of them changing from semester to semester. We were an institutional store, meaning we were owned by the college, however we were treated like any other business on campus. We paid rent, payroll and any all the other expenses, and got nothing from the general fund.
I don't know how many of you know much about retail or the book industry, so I'll try to lay it all out. Regular books have preprinted prices, and bookstores are given a discount from the cover price. In most cases this discount is 45-50%. Textbooks are usually sold for a set price, with no suggested retail, and it is up to the bookstore to decide how much they want charge.
The industry standard margin is 25%. This means that if I was charged $75 for a book, I would sell it to the students for $100 dollars. Out of this $25 dollars I would need to pay for all my expenses: shipping, payroll, rent, etc. In my bookstore, we broke even. Usually we lost a couple grand a semester selling textbooks. We did it because it was our job, not because there was any money in it.
It is typically the authors and publishers who profit from textbooks. They can justify the high cost by giving free materials to instructors. These instructional materials are basically bribes, as many instructors take the free textbooks they get from publishers, and sell them off for cash. I have always viewed this as an unethical practice.
As far as the used book trade goes, the prices paid for books is based on supply and demand. Most used books are handled by wholesalers who buy and sell books as a form of speculation. Most schools don't run their own buybacks, they have a wholesaler come in and buy books for them. Typically, any books that get bought for immediate resale by the bookstore will get top dollar (50% of retail), any other books however will be bought at a wholesale value (10-20% of retail). This is due to the fact that the wholesaler is gambling that they will be able to sell these books to another school before they become worthless.
This is all exasperated by the marketing practices of the publishers, who want to kill the used book trade anywhere they can. They convince the instructors to choose books in complex package sets that include software and workbooks. Since the software EULAs prevent it from being resold, and workbooks get used up, then the bookstore can't offer used versions of these packages and students are forced to buy new.
I used to go to trade shows every year where some company would claim to have the perfect DRM for ebooks. Textbook publishers aren't going to let ebooks happen unless they get to make as much money as they do now. That is plain and simple.
In the long run, I left the industry. It nearly killed me with stress. Everyone blamed me for the price of books, yet there were groundskeepers on campus that were paid more than me. It just wasn't worth it.
I believe that if you want textbook prices to come down, then instructors need to make their decisions based on price and value. Many instructors have no idea how much their books are going to cost the student, and some just don't care. Instructors are the only people who can apply real pressure to the publishers, since they are the ones that decide which books get used. The bookstores are just middle-men. They don't really have much say in the process.
Forgive me for my ramble, and understand that this is a simplified version, where I have left out many smaller issues. For more information you may want to check out NACS.org. They have a lot of useful resources on their site, including a chart that breaks down exactly where the textbook dollar goes.
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I worked in a community college bookstore for five years. I ran the textbook department. Every semester I dealt with over 800 titles, with about half of them changing from semester to semester. We were an institutional store, meaning we were owned by the college, however we were treated like any other business on campus. We paid rent, payroll and any all the other expenses, and got nothing from the general fund.
I don't know how many of you know much about retail or the book industry, so I'll try to lay it all out. Regular books have preprinted prices, and bookstores are given a discount from the cover price. In most cases this discount is 45-50%. Textbooks are usually sold for a set price, with no suggested retail, and it is up to the bookstore to decide how much they want charge.
The industry standard margin is 25%. This means that if I was charged $75 for a book, I would sell it to the students for $100 dollars. Out of this $25 dollars I would need to pay for all my expenses: shipping, payroll, rent, etc. In my bookstore, we broke even. Usually we lost a couple grand a semester selling textbooks. We did it because it was our job, not because there was any money in it.
It is typically the authors and publishers who profit from textbooks. They can justify the high cost by giving free materials to instructors. These instructional materials are basically bribes, as many instructors take the free textbooks they get from publishers, and sell them off for cash. I have always viewed this as an unethical practice.
As far as the used book trade goes, the prices paid for books is based on supply and demand. Most used books are handled by wholesalers who buy and sell books as a form of speculation. Most schools don't run their own buybacks, they have a wholesaler come in and buy books for them. Typically, any books that get bought for immediate resale by the bookstore will get top dollar (50% of retail), any other books however will be bought at a wholesale value (10-20% of retail). This is due to the fact that the wholesaler is gambling that they will be able to sell these books to another school before they become worthless.
This is all exasperated by the marketing practices of the publishers, who want to kill the used book trade anywhere they can. They convince the instructors to choose books in complex package sets that include software and workbooks. Since the software EULAs prevent it from being resold, and workbooks get used up, then the bookstore can't offer used versions of these packages and students are forced to buy new.
I used to go to trade shows every year where some company would claim to have the perfect DRM for ebooks. Textbook publishers aren't going to let ebooks happen unless they get to make as much money as they do now. That is plain and simple.
In the long run, I left the industry. It nearly killed me with stress. Everyone blamed me for the price of books, yet there were groundskeepers on campus that were paid more than me. It just wasn't worth it.
I believe that if you want textbook prices to come down, then instructors need to make their decisions based on price and value. Many instructors have no idea how much their books are going to cost the student, and some just don't care. Instructors are the only people who can apply real pressure to the publishers, since they are the ones that decide which books get used. The bookstores are just middle-men. They don't really have much say in the process.
Forgive me for my ramble, and understand that this is a simplified version, where I have left out many smaller issues. For more information you may want to check out NACS.org. They have a lot of useful resources on their site, including a chart that breaks down exactly where the textbook dollar goes.
My two dollars worth.
Christian