The Sandspur

Issue date: 2/12/07 Section: Life & Times

An article in the Orlando Sentinel ("Cheaper Alternatives for College Textbooks") correctly identified a problem: College textbooks cost too much. But there is a better solution than just buying used books and shopping on Amazon.com.

I use a textbook in one of the classes required for all MBA students in our program. It costs about $140 new at our bookstore, $129.50 new at Amazon.com and between $75.95 and $99.00 used at Amazon.com, but there are fewer than a dozen used copies available.

It costs (according to the publisher) about $10 to print the hardback version. The author makes about $15. Throw in a few dollars for transportation and the publisher and the bookstore are sharing about 80% of the profit.

The professor who created the intellectual property written on those pages gets paid once - when the book is first sold. This is also true for the publisher.

The bookstore, which gets to sell a book 4 or 5 times before a new edition is published is the only big winner and it adds the least value and assumes the least risk.

It is the author who assumes the most risk - three years of work with perhaps no payout whatsoever. However, it is the author who should receive more of the profit. The solution is clear to me: paperless books.

Authors (or even their publishers) should publish online in a format with digital rights management that does not allow the text to be shared, perhaps not even printed. This technology exists today. If the author is the seller, the author will earn almost 100% of the sales price, and thus can sell the books for less while still earning more money.

If the publisher is the seller, it can sell the books for much less because there will be no after-market of used books. It will sell more books and make more money, even though the price per book can be reduced by, say, 50%.

Either way, the student (or in some cases, the parent) benefits from a lower price. The only risk would be publishers who publish online, but act like the oligopolists they are and refuse to lower the price.

Again, the free market has a solution. Professors can refuse to use those products and use others or create their own instead. Again, the students benefit.

Students - the customers of a college - are speaking loud and clear: Books cost too much. Let us reward the authors and meet the needs of our customers simultaneously.

The college bookstores can sell $20 t-shirts instead.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools