used textbooks
I wanted to make a couple of points supporting David Lancy’s op ed piece on the used textbook controversy.
1) Most university professors who write textbooks are not getting rich. In fact, in most cases, textbook authors make less than 10% of a book’s cost (when sold new) whereas the bookstore will often double or triple that profit (bookstores often add 30-40% to the cost of a book). Unless there is a national market for a textbook, authors make very little money on such a huge undertaking as a textbook.
2) The profit margins on used books are much higher for bookstores since they do not have to pay royalties to the publisher or the author(s).
So the economic incentive for the bookstore is to sell used books which seem cheaper to students but actually reveal higher profit margins. Much of that cost–as Lancy points out–is deferred back to the original publisher who must charge higher prices to recoup the costs of printing another new edition.
For more information about the problem, please see Henry L. Roediger’s piece, “Why are Textbooks so Expensive?” in the American Psychological Associations _Observer_, available at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1712.
Rylish MoellerAsst. ProfessorDepartment of English