Guest Column: A Textbook Future
In a previous column, I placed the blame for high textbook prices squarely on the used textbook industry and advised students to abandon used books. That’s unlikely to happen.
Students at the U of U have successfully persuaded faculty to consider ordering only textbooks that have been on the market for at least a semester, thereby creating a supply of used books. From my previous article, you will conclude that this move, if followed by other schools, sounds the death knell for textbooks as we know them. Publishers’ only opportunity to make back the cost of their investment occurs in that first sale of a new book or new edition. If even that is denied them, they will have no incentive to stay in business. Won’t we just continue to use those used books, anyway? Probably not; the only thing that keeps a used text on the market is the legitimating force of the matching new text. As students discover, to their chagrin, once used-book buyers know a new edition is on the way, they stop buying the used version. And faculty would be leery of specifying books that are outdated. It may work in high school, but not at the university.
So what will happen? I think the most likely scenario is that hard copy, printed textbooks will become obsolete. Instead, the same material will be delivered electronically via WebCT or something similar. There will no longer be any secondary market, nor will there be any incentive to sell your downloaded book to your buddy. Why? Because, students will be forced to pay the retail price of the “textbook” as a course fee. This is the only way that I can see to guarantee publishers enough of a return to persuade them to stay in business.
How will this change affect prices? There will be some downward pressure because it is surely cheaper to produce and deliver an electronic text than a printed one. But few publishers will survive this shake-out, few will have the capital to invest in a major change in the way their material is developed, packaged, delivered and sold. And, as everyone knows, fewer players in the market inevitably pushes up prices. Unfortunately, even though publishers will now be able to earn good money on their texts semester after semester (the used text industry has, essentially killed any “retail” sales after the first semester), they won’t necessarily lower their prices. With reduced competition from other publishers and from the used book market, what incentive would they have to do so?
In my view, the used textbook industry, while lowering prices in short-run will, in the end, force publishers to adapt a survival strategy that, if successful, will mean even higher costs to students.
Dr. David Lancy is a professor in the anthropology department and a 2001 Carnegie Professor. This is the second part of a series of columns on textbooks.