The rapidly rising price of textbooks has the Brown Bookstore and other outlets looking for alternatives and ways to reduce the burden on Brown students.
"Rip-off 101," a study published Feb. 1 by the State Public Interest Research Groups, shows wholesale publishers have increased the costs of textbooks by 62 percent since 1994, more than four times the rate of inflation for all finished goods.
According to the study, publishers frequently put out new editions of textbooks without making any significant changes, considerably increasing the costs of textbooks for students.
On average, new editions cost 45 percent more than used copies of previous editions, the study found.
Bookstore and Services Director Larry Carr recognizes the financial burden on students. Each Brown student buys approximately $500 worth of course books per semester from the Brown Bookstore, Carr said. That figure does not include school supplies and books that students purchase elsewhere, Carr added.
Carr said 70 percent of the money students pay for course packets goes toward copyright royalties the Bookstore pays to publishers.
The Bookstore has implemented many cost-containment strategies in an attempt to lessen the increasing financial burden put on students by publishers, Carr said.
"Our biggest cost-containment effort is to focus on used books," he said. The Brown Bookstore sells used books for 25 percent less than new books.
Thirty percent of the textbooks sold in the Bookstore are used books, a percentage that is higher than some of Brown's peer stores, including those at Harvard, Duke and Princeton universities, Carr said.
Carr said the Bookstore pays approximately $75 to a publisher for a new textbook that will sell for $100. The remaining $25 is allocated towards the cost of freight, store staff, operating and overhead expenses.
The Bookstore also buys used books from wholesale publishers, which it typically purchases for 33 percent of the original price, the industry standard, Carr said.
The Admission and Student Services committee of the Undergraduate Council of Students is focusing on how to reduce the burden on students, said committee chair Brian Bidadi '06.
In the spring of 2003, UCS asked the Brown Daily Jolt to create a textbook exchange forum on its Web site. The Textbook Exchange allows students to determine their own price for textbooks. "It's a win-win for students," Bidadi said.
Currently, there are over 1,200 books listed for 350 different classes on the Textbook Exchange, 500 of which were posted in the last month. Of those, 150 have sold, Jolt staffer David Gomel '06 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
"We are planning on redesigning the entire Textbook Exchange over the summer to make it more functional and practical," Gomel wrote.
Itiah Thomas '07 said she uses a variety of avenues to avoid the prices in the Bookstore. "I go to the library to see if they have any of the books I need, I use the InRhode catalog (to find books from other Rhode Island libraries), buy books online or ask friends that have taken the course if I could use their books," Thomas said.
This semester, Thomas, an urban studies concentrator, said she has paid a total of $138 for books for three classes. Her fourth does not require any textbooks because all the readings are online.
"I would assume the textbook industry is a lucrative business," Thomas said.
According to Carr, the Brown Bookstore is in a break-even business. "We're usually a little over 1 percent per year on the bottom line," he said.
Bidadi said students could further decrease the prices they pay for textbooks if the Bookstore were to make available the course adoptions list, an index of all the books and packets required for each course. "One could search for the cheapest prices online for all their books (if the list were easily available)," Bidadi said.
Carr said that making the list available might hurt business, but in the future it may be a feasible possibility. "The Bookstore is looking at our textbook automation system to make the course adoptions list available online instead of through printed materials," he said. Other schools, including Princeton, make their lists available on the Internet.
Adriana Bates '06 said she had paid approximately $550 for books this semester. "The Bookstore has a monopoly on the students because the only other convenient book store (the College Hill Bookstore) closed down," she said.
Bidadi said he thinks the Bookstore should go non-profit, but Carr said that if the University were to begin subsidizing the Bookstore, tuition costs would increase.
Buy-back is one policy the Bookstore uses to help save students money. If a book is on the reading list for a class in the upcoming semester, the Brown Bookstore will buy it back for 50 percent of its original cost, Carr said.
Carr said that last May the Bookstore paid out $150,000 to students for their used books. In December, it paid out about two-thirds of that amount, he said.
The Bookstore's Web site has a listing of books that can be sold back for 50 percent of the original price for the semester.
According to Carr, the Bookstore will consider extending the buy-back period to a full year if it can get a commitment by professors to maintain their course readings and register them as soon as possible.
Zachary Townsend '08, a Herald copy editor and member of the University's Bookstore Review Committee, said, "This is an issue that has been raised to the administrators, and hopefully will be addressed in the coming months."
"As booksellers and publishers we should be promoting books, their unique value and importance to education, instruction and learning, and to one's personal self- education, thinking, development and awareness. In this sense, the value of the book is truly worth the price and a important resource that needs to be supported and maintained," Carr said.
