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<b>Bonhams:</b> MANDELSHTAM, OSIP. 1891-1938. Autograph Manuscript, 2 pp, [Petersburg,] January 1913, entitled

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What is More Expensive than a Collectible Book? -- The Outrageous Cost of College Textbooks - By Michael Stillman The price of textbooks is almost as outrageous as the cost of a college education. By Michael Stillman We received a press release from multi-site book searcher BookFinder.com that highlights one of the major cost issues with books these days. No, we are not talking about the high cost of antiquarian and other collectible books, luxuries rather than necessities for those who buy them. The issue is the outrageous cost of college textbooks students, often of limited means and already in hock up to their eyeballs, must pay for these course necessities. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but the mother of price gouging. Price gouging is never pretty, be it at the gas pump or college bookstore, but is particularly ugly when targeted to items that are requirements for those who can ill afford them. In the release, BookFinder's founder, Anirvan Chatterjee, is quoted as saying, "I can't believe how much students are having to pay this year." I can. I have two kids in college right now, and nothing surprises me. Textbooks typically cost a student in the area of $1,000 per year. And trust me, these will never be collectible works, appreciating in value. I still have some of my old expensive college textbooks, and though they, like I, have become antiquarian, you still can't give these things away. Textbooks have been able to ride along on the coattails of the outrageous cost of a college education today. When colleges can charge upwards of $40,000 a year, and even state schools when all costs are factored in go well into five digits, textbooks can come across as an afterthought. It is like buying a refrigerator when you buy a new house. Having just spent a couple hundred grand for a home, the $1,000 for a new refrigerator seems almost irrelevant. Of course if you buy a refrigerator a few months later, you will pay close attention to the price, and carefully shop around for something less costly. However, if they can catch you at the moment you buy the house, the difference between the $300,000 house and the $301,000 house and refrigerator seems trivial. So it seems with the $40,000 education, or the $41,000 education with books. Who even notices the difference between being $100,000 or $104,000 in debt when you graduate? Either way it's hopeless. However, just as something is going to have to give with college costs, so too will it have to give with textbooks. Education cannot be a privilege of the privileged, and we cannot go on saddling young people just starting their working lives with mountains of debt. We did not do this in the past; we certainly should not be doing it now when we have a wealthier nation. No animal in the animal kingdom expects its young to repay the previous generation for teaching it the skills it needs to survive, except for the human animal, American edition in particular. The young bird is not expected to return thousands of worms to the bird bank for being taught how to fly, yet humans persist in imposing this bird-brained idea on their young.
What is More Expensive than a Collectible Book? -- The Outrageous Cost of College Textbooks - By Michael Stillman none Textbook publishers have been adept at keeping prices high. The used book market, which BookFinder helps students access, is countered by constantly revised editions, making older ones "obsolete." In rapidly changing fields such as medicine and the sciences, this may be necessary, but math doesn't change all that much from year to year, particularly at its basic levels. Nor does history change, or classical music, or Shakespeare or English and other languages. Revised editions add to students' costs, not knowledge, but making older editions obsolete dries up the used book market, though the change may be more in appearance than substance. And then there are add-ons, like CDs provided with textbooks, that make it difficult for students to use perfectly good used copies. Several ideas have been floated to deal with this problem. Michael Granof, a University of Texas professor, recently published an Op-Ed proposal in the New York Times suggesting that texts be sold on the basis of a "site license," rather than a book, like software. Everyone in a class would be required, as part of the course cost, to pay a license fee. That amount would be something reasonable, but all students would have to pay it. Then, students could access the text online for no additional cost, or buy a new or used hard copy. Hard copies would be offered for their actual production cost, comparatively small, rather than the huge mark-ups which generate the profits. Profits would come from the site license. A good text could provide ongoing profits for the author and publisher for years with no extra costs to them. At that point, the profit percentage is 100%, though each student might only have to pay, Granof suggests, $15 for the license. While a clever idea, its implementation might be a bit complicated. Perhaps universities should band together to provide lists of recommended textbooks, with only those fairly priced included. Of course asking universities, already engaged in their own absurd pricing, to help remedy the textbook problem might be a bit of a stretch. It may just bring more attention to their own shortcomings. Perhaps the state universities should lead this attack. Currently, many states provide recommended if not mandated textbook lists for secondary schools. They could logically help on the university level, although I would not favor requiring colleges to buy from these lists. This would allow states, which is to say politicians, to determine what students can be taught. That's not a good idea. However, if they provided recommended lists based on price, it is likely that most publishers would have to offer all of their textbooks at more rational prices to compete with those on the list. For now, students will have to scrounge for the best prices they can find, and the bookselling sites, or site searchers like BookFinder, can help. Of course, it you are told which textbook to buy in your first class, and given an assignment from it that night, a web merchant is not going to be of much help. If the student has a few days, then online becomes a cheaper, though not cheap, alternative. BookFinder listed a typical course load example from the University of California at Berkeley, where the textbooks all new for one semester were $635, at a discount book store $517, and through the web $272.45. That is not a solution to the problem, but it is a stopgap for now until we have the will to tackle this issue.

What is More Expensive than a Collectible Book? -- The Outrageous Cost of College Textbooks

- By Michael Stillman

The price of textbooks is almost as outrageous as the cost of a college education.

By Michael Stillman

We received a press release from multi-site book searcher BookFinder.com that highlights one of the major cost issues with books these days. No, we are not talking about the high cost of antiquarian and other collectible books, luxuries rather than necessities for those who buy them. The issue is the outrageous cost of college textbooks students, often of limited means and already in hock up to their eyeballs, must pay for these course necessities. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but the mother of price gouging. Price gouging is never pretty, be it at the gas pump or college bookstore, but is particularly ugly when targeted to items that are requirements for those who can ill afford them.

In the release, BookFinder's founder, Anirvan Chatterjee, is quoted as saying, "I can't believe how much students are having to pay this year." I can. I have two kids in college right now, and nothing surprises me. Textbooks typically cost a student in the area of $1,000 per year. And trust me, these will never be collectible works, appreciating in value. I still have some of my old expensive college textbooks, and though they, like I, have become antiquarian, you still can't give these things away.

Textbooks have been able to ride along on the coattails of the outrageous cost of a college education today. When colleges can charge upwards of $40,000 a year, and even state schools when all costs are factored in go well into five digits, textbooks can come across as an afterthought. It is like buying a refrigerator when you buy a new house. Having just spent a couple hundred grand for a home, the $1,000 for a new refrigerator seems almost irrelevant. Of course if you buy a refrigerator a few months later, you will pay close attention to the price, and carefully shop around for something less costly. However, if they can catch you at the moment you buy the house, the difference between the $300,000 house and the $301,000 house and refrigerator seems trivial. So it seems with the $40,000 education, or the $41,000 education with books. Who even notices the difference between being $100,000 or $104,000 in debt when you graduate? Either way it's hopeless.

However, just as something is going to have to give with college costs, so too will it have to give with textbooks. Education cannot be a privilege of the privileged, and we cannot go on saddling young people just starting their working lives with mountains of debt. We did not do this in the past; we certainly should not be doing it now when we have a wealthier nation. No animal in the animal kingdom expects its young to repay the previous generation for teaching it the skills it needs to survive, except for the human animal, American edition in particular. The young bird is not expected to return thousands of worms to the bird bank for being taught how to fly, yet humans persist in imposing this bird-brained idea on their young.

What is More Expensive than a Collectible Book? -- The Outrageous Cost of College Textbooks

- By Michael Stillman

none

Textbook publishers have been adept at keeping prices high. The used book market, which BookFinder helps students access, is countered by constantly revised editions, making older ones "obsolete." In rapidly changing fields such as medicine and the sciences, this may be necessary, but math doesn't change all that much from year to year, particularly at its basic levels. Nor does history change, or classical music, or Shakespeare or English and other languages. Revised editions add to students' costs, not knowledge, but making older editions obsolete dries up the used book market, though the change may be more in appearance than substance. And then there are add-ons, like CDs provided with textbooks, that make it difficult for students to use perfectly good used copies.

Several ideas have been floated to deal with this problem. Michael Granof, a University of Texas professor, recently published an Op-Ed proposal in the New York Times suggesting that texts be sold on the basis of a "site license," rather than a book, like software. Everyone in a class would be required, as part of the course cost, to pay a license fee. That amount would be something reasonable, but all students would have to pay it. Then, students could access the text online for no additional cost, or buy a new or used hard copy. Hard copies would be offered for their actual production cost, comparatively small, rather than the huge mark-ups which generate the profits. Profits would come from the site license. A good text could provide ongoing profits for the author and publisher for years with no extra costs to them. At that point, the profit percentage is 100%, though each student might only have to pay, Granof suggests, $15 for the license.

While a clever idea, its implementation might be a bit complicated. Perhaps universities should band together to provide lists of recommended textbooks, with only those fairly priced included. Of course asking universities, already engaged in their own absurd pricing, to help remedy the textbook problem might be a bit of a stretch. It may just bring more attention to their own shortcomings. Perhaps the state universities should lead this attack. Currently, many states provide recommended if not mandated textbook lists for secondary schools. They could logically help on the university level, although I would not favor requiring colleges to buy from these lists. This would allow states, which is to say politicians, to determine what students can be taught. That's not a good idea. However, if they provided recommended lists based on price, it is likely that most publishers would have to offer all of their textbooks at more rational prices to compete with those on the list.

For now, students will have to scrounge for the best prices they can find, and the bookselling sites, or site searchers like BookFinder, can help. Of course, it you are told which textbook to buy in your first class, and given an assignment from it that night, a web merchant is not going to be of much help. If the student has a few days, then online becomes a cheaper, though not cheap, alternative. BookFinder listed a typical course load example from the University of California at Berkeley, where the textbooks all new for one semester were $635, at a discount book store $517, and through the web $272.45. That is not a solution to the problem, but it is a stopgap for now until we have the will to tackle this issue.