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Trampling Our Values

Cash on Delivery
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
by Mae Bunagan

Page Inflation
The Rising Cost of Textbooks
by Lily Huang

Democrats' Dilemma
Finding a Message in Opposition
by Eli Sprecher with Danny Schlozman

Courting Disaster
The Case of Rehnquist v. Liberties
by Patrick Taylor Smith

Starving for Treatment
Inadequate Coverage for Eating Disorders
by Leah Litman

Introspective
Deconstructing the T
by Danny Schlozman

Salmagundi

The Back Page
Moore Strikes Again
by Brendan Connors

It's a perennial question: “Why are textbooks so expensive?” For some of us the blow strikes on the spot, as we swipe payment cards to certain death. For others the shock is postponed until the start of the summer, when it takes the form of a friendly rebate from a neighborhood bookstore, a generous reward of a whole $80 or so, seemingly for nothing-until we realize that $80 is only 5 percent of a much larger figure, the sum of just how much we ended up pouring into our books in the past year.

Most of us have come to a grudging acceptance: the start-of-term routine of extended online searches (when we should be out playing in the fine weather), the inevitable blow to our credit cards (especially to those of a weaker constitution) and their slow resuscitation over the course of the school year, and growing anxiety as getting our work done comes to depend on what arrives in our mailbox. But the least we can do is try to understand the basic why's of the matter, exactly what necessitates the losing of exorbitant amounts of money on the part of students and the presumable gain of the inevitable but faceless profiteer, who is making the money, and just how large the book industry machinery is. We might rest a little easier by putting a face with the corpulent belly that stomachs corporate profits, and reassure ourselves that while someone, somewhere, might have another Porsche, we can share in the infinite value of new knowledge, bound and glossy.

GETTING RIPPED OFF

Getting ripped off is a long and complicated process ultimately masterminded by the publisher, the mountainous entity that casts a ubiquitous shadow (hereby known as the Publisher) over all of its associations. Its domain extends to the three other parties involved in the process of selling a textbook-the author, the bookstore, and the university faculty-and essentially veils itself behind these three fronts: the author, whose name appears on the cover, to whom we direct some undue ire (for being unclear, long-winded and now money-grubbing); the bookstore, the ill-fated messenger that must display the price tag, and the professor, who to some extent we really can't absolve.

We can, however, acquit the author. These academic types aren't in it for the money as much as they are for scholastic prestige and the weight of published books for their swagger. Besides, people who would write textbooks for a living already have far too complicated lives to be accused of predatory capitalism. They'll accept a meager advance and limited sales since, in the long run, recognition in academic circles is a more valuable currency. In fact, according to Paul Horvitz's survey for the American Economic Review, the biggest complaint of most authors isn't royalties, prices, or revenue-sharing policies, but advertising - their publisher's lackluster efforts at proper promotion, circulating word about new titles and the names of the authors alongside them. Horvitz's purely economic analysis of textbook producing reveals that authors generally don't even want higher prices, since those often come at the cost of sales. In this regard the author is essentially aloof to the production end of the making of his textbook; lower prices to him simply mean more copies sold. It's the publisher-er, Publisher-that deals with the additional production costs. And since the additional sales wouldn't make the extra production worthwhile, lower textbook prices are meaningless to the Publisher and may actually turn out to be a disadvantage.

The actual breakdown of the textbook dollar is based on figures that are more or less consistent across the nation. (College bookstores are often eager to disseminate this kind of information because it directs the accusatory finger of expensive textbooks away from them.) About 67.4 percent of each dollar we spend on a textbook goes to cover publishing expenses. That's everything that goes into putting a book together: a whole 9.7 percent for different taxes at the local, state, and federal levels, 7.5 percent of what's left after those taxes for the author's paycheck (which of course is not all pocketed-it's dispersed further over the writer's own expenses, research and midnight oil), 37.3 percent for the actual production and various logistical expenses, and another 12.9 percent for that shoddy job of advertising that publishers are known for. From there expenses are picked up by the bookstore: around 1.7 percent for the physical transport of books and 19.4 percent for general store expenses, from operation to employee costs. Price inflation, to varying degrees, can occur at any of these junctures-estimated production costs, transportation, the dubious “advertising” expenses-and the gradual accumulation of a few padded costs will result in that grand, three-digit sticker price. The entire process leaves about 7.6 percent of the dollar in the hands of the Publisher, and depending on individual store policies, an average profit of about 3.6 percent for the bookstore. (All of these figures are based on national averages from a 1995 study of textbook price inflation by the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education.) The corresponding data at our own Coop varies only slightly. The Coop reports 24.1 percent of revenue going to personnel and operation costs and 2.1 percent to transportation.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Even taking these numerous incursions into account, we can still wonder how paper and ink can amount to a $180 chemistry book. The question becomes what kind of paper and what kind of ink: the priciest books-chemistry, biology, math-are inevitably printed on glossy paper (paper that can actually boast a sheen) and brimming with graphs, sophisticated diagrams and countless color codes, all between a cover you can see your face in. But just as we can expect the cost of printing to increase with fancier material and computer-generated images, we can also expect more inflated prices along the way, at every step-every obstacle, essentially, that the Publisher must deal with in the process of making a book.

The constant output of new editions of the same book is a trick of the publishing trade that strikes us in the moment of a small, imminent victory. Just when we've discovered the diamond in a crowded bulletin board -the guy selling a used copy of said $180 chemistry book -we realize that the course specifically requires the twelfth edition of the textbook, not the eleventh. No one, of course, has yet laid eyes on the twelfth edition, and we are sent trudging back to the Coop. Now, we can speculate that within six months' time the author has had breakthrough of his life and chemistry must stop the presses in order to retain humanity's faith in the atom, in which case we should be happy to give our money to the ever-more-rapid expansion of human knowledge and congratulate the author on his speedy discovery.

But sadly, there has been no discovery.

The breakthrough belonged to the Publisher, who realized that by shifting some page numbers and throwing in another appendix, he could render the new edition absolutely essential to the new crop of consumers in the market for chemistry (which, lucky him, is replenished every year). Maybe next year he'll attach some kind of multimedia appendage and wrap the whole package in shiny plastic-that way, the older edition becomes indisputably obsolete (after all, you can't even put it into the computer) because the CD-OM is found exclusively in the new package and won't be sold separately anywhere.

The practice of printing successive editions of the same book raises two additional concerns: a curious objection to putting out a product of such high material quality in the first place (why use nice paper if the book has a predetermined lifespan of a year?), and the serious setback to the used book market. Not only are used books rendered useless, the price of the new book is subject to further inflation when booksellers can no longer sell the used books in their stock and must recover their losses. New editions force booksellers to rely increasingly upon their new inventory for most of their income.

THE SELLERS' END

Bookstores themselves simply go to show the complexity of the modern book industry. Revenue now comes from a variety of sources (and they really do vary, from books to apparel to rented property) and then pooled in order to be redistributed to cover different expenses, like patching up different holes with the same fabric. In other words, revenues don't come in proportionally, and not every department can support itself. If the Coop relied solely on the buying and selling of textbooks to sustain itself and maintain its rebate policy, it would collapse in ruin. Instead its yearly revenue of more than $40 million is a pool of its income from the textbook department, the actual bookstore, the supply shop, the insignia shop, and the office floors it leases out down by Hong Kong. But that doesn't mean that bookstores are entirely apart from the conglomerate of the textbook industry; it simply means that it's hard to tell. Bookselling practices of the corporate age are increasingly mysterious to the layman eye. The Harvard Bookstore refuses even to disclose its operating costs, which the Coop freely makes public. Harvard's representative at W.H. Freeman Publishers, the people who brought you such BS favorites as Life: The Science of Biology ($121.50 at the Coop) and Modern Genetic Analysis ($154.50 at the Coop), ignored an inquiry about the prices at which he sells these titles to the Coop. What's so complicated about selling books? Maybe the same thing that's complicated about making them.

THE FINAL CULPRIT

The party that won't get off so easily in all of this is the poor faculty, the only people left standing after everyone else has disappeared into the corporate woodwork. Faculty members make their contribution to the price of a textbook by turning in textbook orders late to the bookstore, thereby incurring higher transportation charges for rush delivery that the store then has to absorb. Late orders also result in not getting a shot at the first shipment of used books from the publisher, which directly causes this dismal bookstore scene: a student craning his neck around a textbook shelf in vain search of the elusive yellow sticker. But the most we can say to him is a cheery “Keep craning!” because in the corporate world of competing advantages, the first losers are, unsurprisingly, us. The second is chemistry.

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu