The Changing Face of College Textbooks

What’s happening in the college textbook
market? Students believe that conspiring profit-motivated publishers,
money-grabbing college bookstores, and lazy professors are conspiring
to make them spend $1,000 a year on textbooks. How long can a market stay the same when the
customers hate the vendors and technology is making alternatives available?

The simple solution is for all textbooks to
be available online, for free or for substantially lower cost.

Unfortunately, the problem and the solution are more complex.

Data compiled by the National
Association of College Stores points out that no one is ripping off
anyone else. Between the bookstore and the publisher, there is only a
10% profit. Publishing and marketing a college textbook is labor
intensive and expensive. The publishers face high and rising costs as
they try to get recognized authors, conduct peer review, and provide
extensive editing and fact checking. In addition, they must produce
ancillary materials in order to be competitive, such as question
banks for professors to use to create tests, lecture notes, and
slides. With traditional textbooks, they print on high quality paper
with expensive binding and in color. Then, they must recoup their
costs and make a profit in the first year, because used-book sales
net them no additional revenue.

Yet, with textbooks often costing over $100, students are demanding
changes in the marketplace. What are the different options being
tried out by students, publishers, and professors?

• Used Books

• Online open source textbook

• Online textbook subscription

• Less expensive printing

• Custom printed textbook

• Online course environment

• Scanned free textbook

• Direct to student sales

• Frequent updates

• Subscription to ancillary
  materials

• Use of available online materials

• Alternative hardware devices

• Sharing textbooks

• Not buying textbooks

Below are informal notes on each.

Used Books

If the same textbook is being used by
the same university in the subsequent year, the bookstore will
typically buy back the textbook for half it’s original price. They
then mark the textbook up again, but will still buy it back if it is
being used again.

Obviously, textbook publishers are not
enamored with the used textbook market; they only receive revenue
from new textbook sales. They either have to adjust their prices on
the new textbooks to take into account the lost sales, or they have
to devise other strategies like those below.

If the textbook has been customized for
one class, if there is a new edition, or if there is an additional
fee for an online subscription, the students don’t actually get 50%
of their cost, which contributes to their antipathy toward the
industry. Recent legislation in a number of states is requiring that
publishers declare when new editions are going to be available and
what is changing with each edition. The purpose is to lengthen the
cycles between new editions, allowing for a vibrant used book or book
rental market. These laws are new, so no one knows the results yet.

Online open source textbook

Individuals or groups of professors are
creating free textbooks online that students can read or print. These
include wikibooks and California’s open source textbook project.

One variation on this type of
publishing is to copyright the online textbooks, offer them free
online, but charge for printing or audio versions. O’Reilly Media
has been using this type of model successfully for years with its
technical reference books. A printed black and white textbook from
Flat World Publishing might cost $30, or $50 printed in color,
substantially less than the cost of a traditional textbook.

Free open source textbooks generally do
not come with the extensive question banks and ancillary materials
that many professors rely on. Most are just text and pictures, and
students would rather read from a book than from a computer screen.
But extra practice, animations, video, audio, and interaction could
also be offered for an extra price. For example, if the author
created animated explanations of key concepts, students could
subscribe to those for an added fee.

In addition, these textbooks are not
necessarily peer reviewed, extensively edited, or fact-checked. This
doesn’t automatically make them inaccurate or inferior, but it may
be safer for a professor to just go with an established publisher.

Finally, many professors have spent
years refining the way they teach from a particular textbook. The
professors are often loath to completely changing their notes and
lectures to accommodate a different textbook, one that could change
significantly or even disappear.

On the other hand, except for the
optional cost of printing, they are free.

Online textbook subscription

Many education publishers are offering
students the option of a semester or year online subscriptions to
textbooks. A publisher can do this directly, go through the college
bookstore, or go through a service such as CourseSmart.

Because these are subscriptions, there
is no used textbook market, a benefit for the publishers. Because
publishers receive subscription fees, professors still get access to
the ancillary materials and do not have to change the way they teach.
And because there is no cost of printing, the students spend less
money.

But, if the online material is merely a
representation of the printed textbook, most students are not
interested unless there is a substantial cost reduction (my informal
poll of 50 students pointed to 60% reduction in cost as a reasonable
trade-off). And, if the textbook is to have interactive capabilities,
there needs to be a critical mass of textbooks using the same
technology. There will not be mass acceptance if students have to log
onto different sites, with different sets of commands and functions,
for each textbook.

CafeScribe, recently purchased by
Follett, offers a third option. CafeScribe wraps community,
discussion, note taking, searching around the online textbook. It
will be interesting to watch as they increase the content available.

Still, students do not want to have to
go to different sources to purchase different courses, thus the
market is likely to demand that the college bookstore be included,
and once the student-cost incorporates the bookstore’s markup, it
will be that much harder to provide the substantial savings. Without
savings, until there is significant added functionality to online
material, the market will not reach its potential.

Less expensive printing/Custom
printed textbook

One thing students hate, it’s buying
a 750-page textbook for $150 and then only using half of it.

Many publishers are offering professors
the option of selecting certain chapters, and then printing only
those chapters, often in a lower cost binding on lower quality paper
with no color. This can cut the cost of a textbook by a third, or
even more.

The advantages for the student, though,
may be deceptive. While the initial cost is significantly lower,
there is generally no resale market for these texts.

There is another custom printing option
that does not attempt to lower costs, but to increase value. This is
to tailor a high-quality print job to the way a professor teaches a
specific course. In these textbooks, there is often little or no cost
saving to the student, but the premise is that the textbook is better
integrated into the coursework, so the student receives greater
value. This option, though, is generally only available for the large
survey courses, those with over a few hundred students in the
different sections, because the cost of customization needs to be
amortized over a base.

This high-value approach may meet with
some resistance. One publisher’s experience is that if professors
need to spend a lot of time customizing a textbook, many will just
revert and use the standard book.

There seems to be more acceptance for
customized content from the for-profit sector. These schools often
centralize the textbook decisions; they are more likely to have
custom textbooks or online course environment (see below) and use
them as a competitive edge to support their branding.

Online course environment

Another option is to provide an online
environment that enhances the student’s experience in a course. One
example is a language course, which might include video that is
integrated into the course. The online environment thus provides
features or learning tools that are just not available in print.

Or, the large publishers will build
custom environments for their largest selling courses. They will work
with a school or professor to set up the materials, exercises, links,
etc. that the professor feels will most benefit the students.
Students purchase semester- or year- long subscriptions that are non
transferable. From the publisher’s standpoint, they lock in that
course for years while doing away with the used book market. For the
professors and schools, they now provide a unique benefit to their
students. For the students, they have everything they need to succeed
in that course at their fingertips; providing that the materials
really are engaging and valuable.

Similar to the high value custom
printing above, this option is really only available to very large
courses, and there is often little actual cost savings for the
students.

Scanned free textbook

Some student buys a textbook. Scans it.
And then posts it online so anyone can access it.

It’s illegal, but it’s free.

While this will never go away, it’s
very unlikely that illegally scanned online textbooks will be the
mainstream way that most students obtain their textbooks. But, on the
other hand, I did get a compliment from my daughter last week, so
nothing is impossible.

Direct to student sales

Enterprising students can find
textbooks at lower costs online, sometimes buying international
editions offshore, saving money from purchasing at the bookstore. Two
problems: students prefer to purchase everything at just one
location, and this takes more effort, and with multiple editions of
textbooks, students can never be completely sure that what they are
ordering is exactly what their professor requires.

Frequent updates

Historically, a textbook edition has
lasted 5–7 years, but there is evidence that at least some
publishers have stepped up the process, updating editions every 2–3
years. For the publisher, this reduces the value of used textbooks,
for which it receives no additional money.

To the extent that the shorter cycle is
market-driven instead of content driven, this is a short-term,
shortsighted solution. It infuriates students and professors and has
inspired legislation to limit the practice.

Subscription to ancillary materials

Some publishers are finding that the
online ancillary materials are where a good part of the value is. For
example, going back to the language course, perhaps students can
purchase a used copy of the textbook, but they can only access the
integrated video and exercises with an additional online
subscription. A physics class might offer virtual labs supplied by
the publisher, but only those with new textbooks or online
subscriptions can access them.

The market is going to find some
pricing balance. Obviously, if a new textbook with subscription costs
$120, a used textbook costs $60, and a subscription-only costs $60,
no student is going to purchase the used textbook.

Use of available online materials

Some enterprising professors are
avoiding textbooks altogether. By mashing together online materials,
their own content, and lecture notes. They set up websites, provide
links to free materials, and/or have students post content. Most
professors will not do this for most courses: it’s a lot of work,
they don’t get access to question banks, and links have a funny way
of becoming obsolete.

This can be especially valuable for
smaller, advanced courses, allowing courses to be taught where no
definitive textbook has been created, and allowing greater
flexibility to professors, although with greater effort.

Alternative hardware devices

A book is easier on the eyes and is
more portable than a computer, but alternative devices like future
iterations of Amazon’s Kindle may turn the tables.

Certainly, it would be great to have
all of your textbooks in a package that weighed less than a pound.
But, you would also want the ability to take notes and view color and
graphics. Adding the ability to interact, view your professor’s
notes, access the Web, transfer notes to your desktop, and watch
media; and making it easy to access and search through all your
textbooks with one click could tilt the scales in favor of these
devices. Somehow, I don’t think Apple is going to stay on the
sidelines while this market unfolds.

Sharing textbooks/Not buying
textbooks

Even worse than buying a textbook and
only using half is buying the textbook and finding that all the
material the student needs to learn can be gleaned from the
professor’s lectures.

In the first semester of Freshman year,
virtually everyone buys the textbook that the professor recommends.
By Senior year, the students have become more sophisticated. For some
courses, the textbook is an integral part of the course, adds value,
and is worth purchasing. For others, a group of students can just
purchase one textbook, that they can all share. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that in about a third of the cases, students believe that
they can learn what they need and get the grade they desire without
purchasing any textbook at all.

Conclusions

These are all different options for
combating the high cost of textbooks. Each has advantages for part of
the market. No one solution has the critical mass that propelled
Windows in the 90’s, or the iPod 5 years ago. Certainly, more of
the content is going to be available online, but it’s too early to
pick the winners.

Of course, universities are happy to
see the debate on textbook prices. As long as everyone is focused on
the cost of textbooks, maybe no one will notice the high cost of
tuition.