Publishers drive textbook prices

USU students and the bookstore alike are scraping the bottom of the barrel to purchase the necessary textbooks for every semester.

    Last Spring, the USU bookstore ended their fiscal year with negative funding, said Dave Parkinson, bookstore director.

    Approximately 75 cents of each dollar spent goes straight to the publisher. By spending $1,000 over the course of a student's education, $750 of that goes straight to publishers.

    "We don't ever even see that 75 cents," Parkinson said.

    The bookstore pays high prices in order to keep textbooks on the shelves in the first place.

    3 cents of $1 is used to pay USU rent for using their facility. Although the USU Bookstore is run by the university, it still pays a large sum annually to the Taggart Student Center (TSC) to keep their convenient location. Food services pay rent to the TSC as well, and this money goes towards the TSC's budget. The budget is used for things such as keeping the TSC lit and heated and other student funds.

    15 cents of each dollar spent in the bookstore goes toward paying employees.  Hourly employees start out at minimum wage, and department heads at the bookstore make salaries equivalent to a school teacher, Parkinson said.

    Another 5 cents of each dollar spent goes toward operating costs for the bookstore, such as the cash registers, vehicles and other fixtures in the bookstore.  Parkinson said the store is constantly trying to make the bookstore more cost-efficient, by updating it with a new receiving system, new computers, and more efficient cash registers.

    The last 2 cents that are left are given to the credit card company. Every time a customer swipes their VISA, Discover or MasterCard, the bookstore pays a fee to those companies for the ability to accept the card.

    "Every year is a different outcome," Parkinson said.

    "Some years we make a little money, sometimes we lose it."

    If there is revenue, it will often go into an account for the years the bookstore has negative funding. Money made on textbooks will also go back to university's funds.

    Stuart Baker, a textbook buyer, is floored by how pricey books are, he said: "It's amazing how high prices are. We just add a little bit to cover freight and employee labor to get it onto the floor. A lot of the books will cost the student $100, but in most cases, it costs us almost $100, sometimes even more, to get that book available to the student. Even though we buy them in bulk, the cost from the publisher is so high."

    When asked if he would refuse to buy a textbook that was too expensive, Baker said, "As far as I know, we are required to provide every textbook that professors require, regardless of price. We don't choose the books that we sell."

    The option to buy online, from websites such as Amazon.com or Half.com, is one that students often fall back on. Books can be found for a lower price online, but a gamble is taken; the book might not be the exact edition needed or may never arrive.

    The average margin between the price the books are bought and sold for is below 20 percent. 

    "Normal retail margin is about 60 percent, so that 20 percent is laughable to most retail, that we would sell for that low," Baker said.

    Textbooks are expensive to produce initially. Printing costs, paying multiple authors, and paying for copyrights are all expenses that the publisher has to meet, and can add up quickly. But the ultimate answer is to why textbooks are costly is because they can be. Students are required to buy these books, regardless of the pricing.

    Dave Hanson, the associate director of the bookstore, said he realizes that the professors control what students buy.

    "We don't decide what we put on our shelf, that's completely up to faculty. We just get the book here," he said.

    Many textbooks are custom USU editions. These books are specific to the class they are for and the program they represent and are among the bookstore's most expensive. They cannot be found anywhere but in the USU bookstore. There are benefits to using custom editions for the students, but Dave Hanson suggests that benefits go to teachers as well.

    "When a professor uses a book that is a custom edition, they author a few pieces in the book, created a chart that is used, or other work that is specific to them," Hanson said.

    "They put it on their resume and it gives them points towards their tenure. It's a big deal for them, and you, as the student, pay for that."

    Custom editions are helpful to students in classes that are specific to programs within USU, but it is an individual opinion as to whether the benefits outweigh the cost.

    Professors will sometimes switch books at the end of summer, causing an inconvenience for students as well as the bookstore. When a professor switches textbooks, students have to return their books, if possible, and buy the new edition.

    "We have to eat the thousands of dollars that costs us each year," Monson said.

    A benefit that the USU bookstore provides is buy-back. USU buys any book they can use for about 50 percent of the purchase price. They don't require receipts of proof showing that a book was bought at USU, so students can buy it anywhere and sell it back to the university. The bookstore pays a flat rate for the books, regardless of students being the first or twentieth user of the book, a policy unique to the USU bookstore.