SB 832 Goes to Schwarzenegger….

SB 832 is an attempt on the part of the California State Legislature to address the issue of textbook costs at colleges and universities. Its main provisions are to require publishers to make cost information available to faculty in their marketing materials, so that faculty can consider the costs when making a textbook decision. Good idea, in my view. Professors are good at critical thinking. Secondly, it requires textbook publishers to list the substantive differences between a new and previous edition.

As a textbook author, I find the continuing emphasis on the textbook publisher to bring down costs somewhat frustrating. These discussions are reminiscent of the Napster controversies. Sure, everybody loves free music, but who in their right mind will bother producing it for free? Students want cheap textbooks, and that is understandable, but most of us would not choose to work this hard just for the fun of it.

The main issue driving textbook costs is rarely part of these discussions–the used book market. Once a textbook is “out there,” new sales by the publisher drop to nearly zero. Everybody buys a used book, because they’re now available and cheap. The problem with this is that the publisher makes zero money on these resales. Consequently, all costs related to the preparation of the book (my very expensive medical illustrations and animations, for instance), must be recovered the first term the book is available, rather than spread out over all sales over the lifetime of the book, most of which are used copies. This is the major reason for frequent revisions–if a book is out there more than a couple of years, the publisher stops making money on it. To stay in business, they need products that will be sold new.

Fortunately, one has a clear conscience in revising a biopsych text–the field is moving so quickly that there is a clear academic rationale for updating, and the updates will be “substantive.” Listing them all is something most authors already do in their introductory remarks, so I don’t think this part of the bill will have much impact.

Let’s look at a comparison of books with no resale and textbooks. New copies of Harry Potter can be sold for about $25 as opposed to the $100 or so for my biopsych text. Yes, there is an economy of scale in producing millions of books, and Harry doesn’t have medical illustrations. But the major difference between the costs comes from the fact that nobody resells Harry. His publisher can spread out all costs over all books sold. The text publisher must recover all costs from the small fraction of books that are sold new.

Here’s the bottom line: students buying a new copy of a text are subsidizing their peers, who get to buy the cheaper copies next term. Personally, I don’t think this problem will go away until we sell one-time access to online materials that can’t be printed or distributed. But part of me is sad about this. My college texts, although now outdated, formed the beginning of my adult library. Once in awhile, I return to them as familiar old friends. Plus, there’s something about having a real book in your hands to read on the patio or at the beach. I’m going to miss that.