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Ralph Westfall no hometown provided writes:

Erika Gonzalez’s article about the textbook price protest didn’t address marketing practices of the industry that raise both costs and ethical concerns. Publishers routinely send free copies of textbooks to any faculty members that might conceivably use them. Then independent book buyers visit faculty offices to try to buy these texts. An associate at another school said he made $500 a year by selling most of the ones he received. In addition the publishers sometimes solicit faculty members to review books and pay them for their efforts. Although such practices are not illegal, they seem disturbingly similar to the way lobbyists spend money on legislators.
To avoid concerns about the propriety of my relationship with the publishers, I am now turning down offers of pay for reviewing textbooks for publishers and am returning to sender textbooks that publishers mail to me. I am also putting myself in my students’ shoes by buying my own personal copies of textbooks for my classes rather than requesting free “desk copies” from publishers. This is definitely raising my consciousness of both the costs and the alternatives.
If faculty members become directly involved with textbook prices, it would lead to very noticeable reductions in this financial burden for their students. For example, previous versions of textbooks are often available on the Internet in such large quantities that it would be very practical for faculty to specify them instead of more costly newer versions. Some of the references to recent trends might be outdated, but it wouldn’t be hard for instructors to provide updates in their lectures and other materials. Standardizing a class on an older version would also cover the issue of having students all work on the same problem sets.

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

What would be wrong with just posting the whole book on line? Students could either read it on line or print it at their cost. The author could be paid a fee by the school. Or the publisher could maintain the book on the website and charge for downloads.

Yakov

There's no profit in putting textbooks online if you are the publisher. You save the five or six dollars for printing and the dollar for shipping but you lose the forty dollars you charge the college book store. The book store loses the extra twenty they mark it up.

It's a great deal more complicated, and more dangerous to post books online than songs or movies. There is less interest overall and no real rewards.

Some day your suggestion will be the norm and the howl and holler will be for the students too poor to have high speed internet available at home.

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