Textbook prices have risen 812 percent over the past 30 years, according to a Jan. 4 article in The Huffington Post.
At this rate, textbook prices are increasing faster than tuition, fees, medical services and home prices, according to the article.
The National Association of College Stores reported in July that students spend $655 every year on textbooks, based off students' own estimates.
The College Board's estimate is higher at $1,168 for the average student at a public, four-year university.
ASU outsourced its campus bookstores in 2011 to Follett Higher Education Group, which manages more than 900 campus bookstores across the U.S.
Follett made $353 million selling textbooks in fiscal year 2011, according to its annual report for that year. New textbook sales accounted for $119.1 million of that amount, with rental sales bringing in $27.5 million and used sales bringing in $74 million.
Dennis Mekelburg, director of the Sun Devil Campus Stores, said that ancillary materials — such as test forms, presentation slides and software — didn’t exist 30 years ago and are now driving up prices.
Another contributor to the high prices is the textbook publisher, Mekelburg said.
To offset losses from the sale of used textbooks, publishers release more expensive, new editions to drive out the old ones, he said.
Mekelburg said increasing prices could also be attributed to the growth of digital textbooks. Although digital editions of textbooks are often less expensive, he said, there is a cost associated with creating content for multiple platforms.
Digital textbooks will increasingly have ancillary materials built into them, Mekelburg said.
The University bookstore, which must stock textbooks for every class at ASU, offers around 4,000 titles. Ten percent of the titles are bundled offerings that include multiple book packages or books paired with software, Mekelburg said.
Although the software can be expensive, he said, instructors would not require it if it was not useful.
The bookstore tries to keep textbooks affordable by offering used, digital and rental copies. Buying used books can save students around 25 percent, Mekelburg said.
The buyback program offers students up to 50 percent of their purchase price back if the book is adopted for the next year and the bookstore needs copies. Otherwise, the bookstore will pay market value.
The market value the bookstore buys at is based on the price of the book across all competitors, Mekelburg said. With competitors such as Amazon as an option for students, the market value can be very low.
The way textbook prices are set is complex “both on the publishing side and the retailer’s," Mekelburg said. “The value has to come from the student’s perspective."
Professor Angelo Kinicki, Weatherup-Overby chair of leadership at the W.P. Carey School of Business, said he knows the complexity of the process first hand.
Kinicki has authored four textbooks, and three are actively used at colleges across the nation and around the world. His first book, "Organizational Behavior," was published in 1989 and is in its 10th edition.
Kinicki said students don’t realize how much work goes into producing a textbook and that new editions take six to eight months to produce.
The first edition of "Organizational Behavior" took him five years to write and another year to revise, he said.
“Five years, developing, nurturing, creating ... it’s a big investment,” he said.
Kinicki said he is not allowed to use University resources to write his textbooks and has to work around his commitments as a professor.
The process is nuanced on the publisher's side, he said. Once all the chapters have been written and edited in-house, the chapters go to other professors for review — who are paid for their work. The book is revised again and sent back to the publisher.
When revisions are done, the document is formatted into a book and permissions are paid for any pictures and figures used in it.
“In one of my books, we paid $25,000 to use someone’s materials,” Kinicki said.
The price also has to cover piracy, including the sale of preview versions and international editions.
Kinicki said that the money lost from used sales is included in the price.
Used book sellers make more money than the author and publisher, he said.
Kinicki said bookstores, which buy books at a lower price than their full market value, raise prices.
“Ultimately, everyone wants their little piece, and I think that’s part of the problem,” Kinicki said. “I don’t blame students for wanting to find a cheaper way. I’m an instructor, too, and when I see someone’s prices, I’m astounded.”
Kinicki said he is unsure how much longer he will continue to produce his textbooks, because he’s been working harder to produce supplements while sales are going down.
Websites such as Boundless.com offer free "alternative" textbooks written from open educational resources on the Internet. Students can enter the ISBN of their required textbook, and Boundless will coordinate its existing document to that book. It offers supplements as well, such as flashcards and quizzes.
Its materials are legal, though publishers have filed lawsuits against them, according to Boundless.
Delon Washo-Krupps, School of Life Sciences professor, said she is unconvinced of open source materials.
“I’ve seen the amount of work that goes into the process of creating a textbook and the ancillary materials that go along with it, and I am skeptical that such products could be offered as ‘free,’” she said.
Washo-Krupps said she chooses textbooks that are of high quality and offer a variety of options, such as traditional bound or digital.
ASU students, on the other hand, are more than willing to use open source texts.
Computer science sophomore Vanessa Bedolla said she spent more than $300 on textbooks last fall and doesn’t like ASU's prices.
“They’re pretty steep, honestly,” she said.
Bedolla does not like bundled offering and custom ASU books because of the difficulty of reselling them.
Bedolla said she would be interested in open source texts, even if it meant a large amount of personal printing.
Reach the reporter at Amy.M.Medeiros@asu.edu
