Local textbook company one of many steps in design process
Textbook prices are high because producing them involves more than most students think.
A visit to WestWords, a local textbook design company, provides a new look at what it really takes to produce a book.
Janis Chutich, plant manager at the office in Logan, said there are many different parts to production which make a textbook cost so much.
The cost of producing a book is split several different ways between the publisher, author, design company, art studio and printer, she said.
“The $100 for a book becomes easier to understand when you see how much goes into it,” Chutich said.
She said the publisher gets the largest part of the book costs while the author gets relatively little.
“Authors write as a part of the achievement cycle for professors, not so much to get money,” she said.
A few authors, those who write regularly for a publisher, make big royalties, Chutich said.
Dr. Lawrence Cannon, a professor in the mathematics and statistics department at Utah State University, agreed authors usually don’t write textbooks for the money.
Lawrence participated in writing four different texts for trigonometry, college algebra and pre-calculus classes.
He said authors usually write a new book because they see changes which need to be made in the current text.
“We did it because we wanted to do things the way they ought to be done,” Cannon said. “But we don’t do it in this profession to get rich.”
Cannon said most of the price of a book gets marked up when it arrives in the bookstore.
“Authors receive about 15 percent of the gross or wholesale price of the book, which isn’t what they charge in the store,” he said.
Cannon said the bookstores usually mark up the price of the book about 40 percent, so the amount of money split between the author, publisher and a designer like WestWords is not as much as the amount students see on the shelves.
Located at 45 E. 200 North, WestWords has been in business for about five years now, Chutich said.
The company used to be part of a larger one located in California but broke off during a small dispute.
WestWords employs people with many different backgrounds and about 50 percent of the employees are students at USU.
“Designing textbooks requires a variety of different people with different skills,” Chutich said.
She said the process involves employees with many backgrounds, from the talents of students in the computer science field to the “correcting things syndrome” of the copy editor and proofreaders.
WestWords provides design skills for many publishers including Prentice Hall and Addison Wesley Longman.
The company works mostly with math and science books, but also does some of the design work for political science and English texts.
Chutich said the process of making a textbook can take two to three years and requires a lot of cooperation between authors, publishers and the design crew.
Although many of the employees at WestWords have graduated from college in some field relating to their jobs, Sharon Bybee, a employee in the composition department, said she learned most of her skills on the job.
“I didn’t even know what the mouse was on the computer,” Bybee said.
Chutich said she thinks one of the great parts about the company is the old knowledge blending with the new.
Kim Mercer, Therese Stamm and Sanna White said they love their jobs working at WestWords in the proofreading department.
“It is a fun place to work and it keeps you in college and learning,” said Stamm, a 68-year-old student at USU in history and art. “I enjoy coming to work.”
Mercer used to teach at a local school, and said she enjoys her job as a proofreader much more.
“You have to have a different mentality to be happy while proofreading though,” she said. “For us it is like a puzzle or a mystery.”
Mercer said it is tough to make the style of a book consistent because proofreaders have to change from book to book.
All three also agreed they have a much greater appreciation for the cost of college textbooks.
“Before, we were a lot more outraged about the cost, but now we understand why,” White said.