Lowering Your Book Prices

Over the course of the semester, the Undergraduate Council has returned to the issue of textbook prices. While we appreciate the COOP's efforts over the course of the past year to lower prices and order more used titles, a report recently presented to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Committee on Undergraduate Education revealed that the COOP simply isn't positioned to compete with online booksellers. More than a dozen UC members compiled data comparing book prices at the COOP with the prices that online booksellers charge. In all, we collected information on new book titles for 24 classes at the College--12 in the CORE program, and 12 departmental offerings.

In no case was the COOP able to undersell its online competitors, and across the courses, students could have saved an average of $22 per class had they ordered their books online instead of buying them at the COOP.

As a result of this finding, the Undergraduate Council has proposed implementing an internet-based program that facilitates online book ordering. Such a program would have two components--first, students would be able to select the courses that they plan to take and have the program generate a report showing them the cheapest possible combination through which to order their textbooks online--including links to the booksellers, complete with pre-generated "shopping baskets" to speed up the ordering process. Second, the Undergraduate Council would establish "affiliations" with a variety of online booksellers that enable it to receive commissions of up to 15% on each referral that result in a textbook sale.

Put into practice, the program could dramatically reduce the prices that students pay for books. The average enrollment in the 24 classes that e collected data on was about 225--with an average savings of $22 per student, the per course savings (had all students in each class ordered their books through the system) would have been more than $5000. For the 24 courses we collected data on, that would have resulted in direct savings to the student body of about $123,000. At the same time, students would have spent about $230,000 on course books: at an average commission of 5 percent, the program would have generated $11,500 for the UC to distribute to student groups. Given that our average grant is about $300, the program--for just these 24 courses--could have provided enough money to fund nearly 40 additional groups--or to double the funding for 40 existing groups!

With the support of the Committee on Undergraduate Education, we hope to have the program running by next Fall--in time to save students hundreds of thousands of dollars and generate much-needed revenues to return to the students in the form of student group grants. A demonstration of the program is available at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pgusmor/hbo/ -- check it out today!