Stomp the Comp
by Richard Hull, TAA Executive Director

The old bugbear of textbook authors and publishers, the purchaser of used books, is on the prowl again, this time on a Northeastern U.S. college campus. And this time, the effort to purchase instructors' copies to resell to students is blatant.

Recent developments

A faculty member at the college (who asks that identities remain undisclosed) recently received an e-mail from a textbook reseller offering to buy textbooks, complimentary copies, annotated instructor editions, special editions, and more.

The faculty member, a textbook author, was particularly incensed by the prospect of annotated instructor editions containing answers to homework exercises assigned from the text being in circulation among students. The academic noted that students at the college had ordered what they took to be used student copies, but had gotten instructor's desk copies, the cost of which is already factored into the price of textbooks.

The problem arises from two sources: the companies that deal in this way with faculty desk copies, and the faculty who sell their free copies to those companies. Further, such companies sell direct to students, bypassing the campus bookstore where faculty at least have the opportunity to prevent reselling of annotated copies to students.

The faculty member contacted campus police to complain, and discovered that the college has had a policy for nearly ten years prohibiting the practices in question and banning textbook purchasers who engage in them from campus. The campus police contacted the textbook buyer to indicate that he was not welcome on campus and that he would be ejected should he attempt to enter without permission.

Finally, the faculty member contacted us, asking whether there is anything TAA can do about this practice.

TAA's leadership

Since its inception in 1987, TAA members have held the problems of complimentary copies and used textbooks to be among the most worrisome and aggravating ones of the profession. In 1988, a committee was formed under the leadership of Howard Anton to study these problems and propose ways of dealing with them.

The committee's plan for solving the complimentary copy problem was as follows: Legal Classification -- Complimentary copies are currently unsolicited and consequently not subject to any restrictions by the sender. In order to exercise control over their use and distribution, they must b made solicited items. To achieve this we propose that each department that is to receive complimentary copies be required to fill out a request form annually or on a one-time basis. All complimentary copies will be mailed to the department office , or if the department chairperson so designates, to individual professors. Identification -- Complimentary copies must be clearly identifiable as such in an unalterable way. [Various measures were proposed, from tinted paper to altered covers bearing "Free Book" over and over, to drilled holes.} License Agreement - Every complimentary copy must be accompanied by a license agreement which specifies restrictions on its use. Controlling Purchase and Sale -- The TAA will seek the cooperation of NACs, university administrators, and wholesalers in eliminating all trade in complimentary copies. Because such copies will be clearly and permanently identifiable, and because they will be controlled by the initial license agreements, authors and publishers will have legal grounds on which to challenge violators. Facilitating the Return of Unwanted Copies -- To facilitate the return of unwanted complimentary copies in accordance with the license agreement, all complimentary copies should be accompanied by an easy-to-use postage-paid return mailer. Moreover, additional mailers should be supplied to the department on a regular basis through sales representatives or by mail when requested. Education -- TAA should undertake a program to educate professors and others on the long-term benefits that the new policy will have for the educational community. Publishers' compliance - TAA will urge all authors to obtain clauses in their contracts that will require the publisher to comply with the foregoing items.

Some successes

Later that year, the ethics commissions of Alabama and Louisiana ruled the sale of complimentary copies of texts given to professors in state schools to be illegal; Alabama later rescinded their ruling, holding that text which faculty members solicit may not be sold for financial gain, but unsolicited textbooks were the property of the individual faculty member and may be disposed of in any legal manner.

Wallace's College Book Company of Lexington, KY, announced a new policy of refusing to purchase any book identified as an instructor's desk copy. And the Faculty Senate of Cal State, Sacramento, resolved that it is unethical for faculty members to sell copies of texts given them by publishers for the purpose of adoption consideration. Scott, Foresman and Company altered its comp copy cover to identify it as a free copy.

In late 1988, the Faculty Senate of Kearney State College, Nebraska, recommended strongly against comp copy sale. A similar resolution was passed by the Faculty Senate at the University of Cincinnati. The University of North Carolina at Wilmington's Faculty Senate declared the sale by faculty of complimentary textbooks as an unprofessional practice.

During 1989, TAA's committee continued to experiment with means of identifying comp copies, with dye, trimmed corners, and drilled holes. The TAA newsletter reported a fight between a book buyer representative and a publisher representative. TAA President Mike Keedy and charter member Karl J. Smith made a proposal to the Association of American Publishers during May of that year, for complimentary copies to be unalterably identified, and such copies to be distributed only on request of the faculty member, on a request form that includes a statement that the book may not be sold and is subject to an enclosed licensing agreement. Pennsylvania State University's Bookstore undertook a student education program about the problem, admitting that it had agreed not to purchase and offer such books only if competing bookstores followed suit.

In the next year, McGraw-Hill began identifying comp copies with a repetitive pattern on the back cover and front pages, prompting one used book seller to declare that text-books so marked were of no value and that they would not buy them. Clemson's Faculty Senate categorized the selling of complimentary copes of texts by any employees as unprofessional conduct. AAP developed the idea of a pre-addressed adhesive mailing strip attached to each comp copy that would result in the return of the complimentary copy to the publisher when a faculty member dropped the copy in a mail box. Montclair State College's Faculty Senate found itself paralyzed between student interests and authors. But other institutions and organizations had no such ambivalence. The California Association of Administrators of Justice Educators resolved that selling complimentary copies by any member of the Association was unprofessional conduct; Georgia State University's Faculty Senate banned the resale of complimentary textbooks, banned solicitors for such copies from campus, and forbade the campus bookstore from selling any such copies whatever their source.

And some mixed results

But by April of 1990, TAA's proposal to the AAP was rejected, with AAP's Chair stating that "the first publisher to adopt the proposal will immediately be put at a competitive disadvantage." Such concerns did not deter a small publishing company in Texas, PST, Inc., of Dallas, which adopted the policy that no books are ever sent without being requested, and that copies sent to potential adopters are either to be returned, purchased, or given to the adopter upon adoption of the text. Holt, Rinehart & Winston made a door sticker available to members of TAA that showed graphically that the office occupant opposed selling review copies. The American Mathematical Association for Two Year Colleges took a stand against selling comp copies, as did the National Association of College Stores.

Point counter-point

Counter arguments appeared in the TAA newsletter from time to time. An extended letter in the TAA Report from TAA member Bill Bompart, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Augusta College, reviewed counter arguments to TAA's policy statements for his faculty, pointing out that it was implausible to expect publishers to show much concern over the concerns of textbook authors about their royalties. In a subsequent issue, Parker Ladd responded to Bompart's memorandum, pointing out that publishers were making efforts to curb the practice of reselling comp copies.

The issue wanes . . .

The next several issues of TAA Report had relatively few articles devoted to the comp book problem. Miami-Dade school district banned comp solicitation; publishers tried return mailers to cut comp copy revenue losses. The issue resurfaced in 1993 with a review by Thomas Lathrop of the efforts of TAA to solve the problem, and a report on the practice of Sterling Educational Media of buying comp copies. In 1995, a note identified thieves posing as used book company reps who scouted out comp copies during the day at Plymouth State College, River College, and Saint Anselm College, then returned at night to steal them. In 1996, The Academic Author, TAA's renamed newsletter, reiterated TAA's opposition to the purchase and sale of comp copies of textbooks and asked members to report instances of the practice. Prophetically, the article stated, "The used book problem is not going to go away. TAA is not going to solve the problem with any one initiative but we can chip away at it little by little.... Support . . . TAA's initiative of opposing complimentary copies of text books from being sold." In 1997, the newsletter reported a resolution from the University of North Dakota calling on faculty to donate comp copies to an appropriate library or a colleague.

And resurfaces

The issue remained in the background in TAA newsletters until revisited by President Mike Sullivan in 2003 and again in 2004. He reported blatant advertising on internet websites of instructor's editions that emphasized that these editions, unlike student ones, had all the answers in the back. He pointed out how this compromises the integrity of the book.

Bookbuyers seek to evade campus regulations

Investigation discloses that if one puts the ISBN of an instructor's annotated edition into several websites that buy and resell texts over the internet to students, thereby bypassing campus-wide efforts to stop the practice, purchase prices for the desk copies are quoted. We have found that Amazon.com gave no results, but Bookbyte Textbooks, Textbookreusers, ValoreBooks, Booksintocash, Collegetextbookhub, Popfuzz, and Textbookbuyer all would give a price when the ISBN was entered. The latter even advises, "We understand your need for privacy; if other instructors or students see that you sell college textbooks (desk copies, etc.), they might not understand that sometimes shelf-space is more important than collecting dozens of books on the same subject! While packing your books to ship to our online service, your colleagues will assume you are merely, 'taking your books home.'"

The question of ownership may be central to the legality of faculty reselling desk copies. If, for example, the book is solicited by the faculty member as an examination copy, a contractual relationship may exist between the publisher and the faculty member such that the liberty of the faculty member to dispose of the text is constrained. And if the text were sent unsolicited, it may be owned by the institution; in this case, an individual reselling the text may be technically guilty of stealing the text from his or her school and "fencing" the hot property. Publishers may want to provide coded strips similar to the ones schools put on computers and other equipment provided by the institution that would allow an electronic record to be transmitted to the school. Schools may wish to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward faculty reselling desk copies, with sanctions for violations severe enough to discourage the practice.

Clearly, this is a problem that won't go away. This faculty member's recent experience is but the latest in a long series of incursions by market-driven values that are not tempered by the realities of the classroom. A strict policy of zero tolerance of students using instructor copies and of faculty selling them would seem to be the only way to stop the practice. Short of those extremes, education of our students and colleagues through the measures documented by TAA over the years is our constant challenge.

As with liberty, eternal vigilance is the price.