Bookstores, Not Publishers, To Blame For High Prices

o the editors:

Textbook publishers often take the heat for the price of books (Editorial, “Stop Fleecing the Students,” April 14). In the recent debates, however, a major contribution to the final selling price has been overlooked: the campus bookstore. My wife is a sales representative for a large publishing firm that specializes in college textbooks. Much of her daily struggles involves the campus bookstores. Bookstores will routinely raise the cost of books by 20 to 40 percent over the wholesale price from the publisher. The bookstores will then buy used books and sell them at inflated prices. While overlooked, the used book market also contributes greatly to the price of new books. Publishers do not receive a cent when a used book is sold, but the bookstore can buy books from students for less than half price and then add the same 20 to 40 percent mark-up as they do for new books. Publishing companies stay in business only by selling new books.

Despite widespread claims that new editions come out every other year, the vast majority of textbooks are updated on a three-year cycle. Certainly some exceptions are seen, but that is typically to inspire competition within the textbook market. If professors can have a choice of several books that are all the latest revision, hopefully, students will benefit by having the professor choose the best book among many.

Textbook publishers should make a better effort to curb the price of books. However, it is the professors who tell the publishers what books they want to use and what kind of “bundled extras” they feel are necessary. If the demand for these items were minimal, the publishers wouldn’t spend the money to produce them. To lower textbook prices, let your professors know you would prefer cheaper books and complain to the bookstores about inflating the costs.

BRIAN D. PERKINS

April 14, 2004

The writer is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.