September
20, 2005
GAO analysis
of textbook costs accurate but incomplete
Used books, poorly prepared students to blame
The Government Accountability
Office (GAO) study of textbook pricing overlooks two student-centered
facts that have contributed to the increase in textbook costs in recent
years, said Richard Hull, executive director of the Text and Academic
Authors Association: Students don't keep their textbooks, seeking to
gain returns on them by selling them back to bookstores and co-ops for
resale; and students are increasingly poorly prepared to learn from
straight text-only materials.
The GAO study lays
responsibility for the increase in textbook prices at the door of publishers
who package textbooks with supplemental materials, said Hull, but overlooks
significant external forces driving up the publisher's costs. "As publishers
and authors are bypassed by the sale of used books, the cost of getting
a new edition to press must be spread across a smaller and smaller number
of copies in the life of any edition," he said. "If students would keep
their textbooks for future reference, publishers could lower their prices
because they would increase the volume of sales of a given edition;
and authors of textbooks would receive royalties roughly approximating
the number of students benefitting from their books."
Hull said supplemental
materials are a necessity for most students, many of whom come to college
unable to learn from traditional textbooks: "The generations of students
who have spent many hours daily watching television or other visual
media lack the facility, skills, and attention span for absorbing information
from the written word. Hence, graphics, CD-ROM, and study guides are
needed by students to increase their comprehension of material which,
a generation or two ago, students readily mastered. As well, more open
admissions are bringing students into college who are comparatively
poorly prepared for college work, again necessitating supplemental learning
aids. Preparation of such add-ons drives up the cost of textbooks."
One additional factor
to the increase in textbook prices, said Hull, seems to be the politicization
of textbooks by state textbook boards: "The cost of dealing with the
state adoption process adds a sort of 'non-creative overhead' to the
publishing process that increases the costs borne by publishers for
a process that is not justified by a corresponding improvement in the
resulting texts."
All these factors
need to be given due weight by the GAO in reaching recommendations to
help guide the textbook industry, said Hull: "Our changing cultural
lifestyles have costs; increased textbook prices are one of them."
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Free
Online PolySci Text
Submitted by Lyle
C. Brown, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Baylor
University (clarence@usawide.net)
-- The authors and publishers of more than a dozen Texas politics textbooks
have some new competition. For the fall semester 2005 the University
of Texas at Austin offers a free online textbook (http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu)
that can also be used by students and instructors at other colleges
and universities. Eight chapters ranging from 11,000 to 13,000 words
are available now, and others will be added soon. Developed by faculty,
staff, and graduate students in the Department of Government at UT-Austin,
this virtual textbook is expected to save $300,000 annually for about
5,000 UT-Austin students who enroll for American Government 310 L. Due
to the legislative requirement that all students in Texas's public community
colleges and state universities take a course on Texas politics, there
are more than a dozen Texas Politics textbooks on the market. Each major
publisher offers one or more.
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AAP Response
to GAO Report
The Association
of American Publishers endorsed the conclusions of a Government Accountability
Office (GAO) study on college textbooks that note textbook prices have
been largely driven by publishers' investments in additional instructional
materials and new technologies. Those investments were made, said the
AAP, in response to faculty needs and to enhance student success. The
AAP did, however, express continuing concern that pricing analyses in
the study do not provide a balanced picture of the actual costs to students,
the range of materials available to students, or the added value those
materials offer to faculty and students. AAP wrote a letter to the GAO
expressing its continuing concerns about the report's data and how it
is presented. It can be found at http://www.publishers.org/highered/topics.cfm?topicid=5
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John Wiley to
Provide Digital Desk Copies
John Wiley & Sons
has partnered with VitalSource Technologies, a provider of digital content
solutions for education, to deliver key Wiley textbooks as Wiley Desktop
Editions using the VitalSource P2(TM) publishing platform. Wiley Desktop
Editions will be available this fall for more than 80 of Wiley's best
selling titles in science, math, business, social sciences, engineering,
and computer science, and will be priced at 60 percent off of the list
price for the printed book. The program will allow students to own the
digital version of their book for future use and reference.
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Study Finds Faculty
Want Digital Content
A report by Eduventures,
which provides research and analysis on the education market, found
that nearly 50 percent of college faculty are strongly interested in
using digital media in the classroom, showing a high demand that publishers
are working to fulfill. Digital Learning Technologies and Instructional
Impacts, one of the first reports to focus on the faculty point of view,
was based on a survey of faculty from 112 institutions, and found that
professors, assistant professors and associate professors are motivated
to use digital content in the classroom for a variety of reasons, including
student demand, university demand and a greater availability of content.
According to the report, this relatively high demand for digital content
could signal a shift in the publishing market away from traditional
textbook-based content and towards emerging digital content.
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Hull sends letter
to editor of New York Times
In a letter to the
New York Times, TAA's Executive Director Richard Hull responds to an
op-ed by Ian Ayres (www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/opinion/16ayres.html)
who suggests that the solution to higher textbook prices lies in colleges
including the price of textbooks in tuition. Hull said Ayres' plan "would
lead to some concealment of the cost of textbooks, but it is not at
all clear that it would be anything more than an invitation to load
onto textbooks the costs of other operations."
Here is the full
text of Hull's letter to the editor:
Editor:
Ian Ayres (Sept.
16 2005) suggests the solution to higher textbook prices lies in colleges
including the price of textbooks in tuition. Ayres' plan would lead
to some concealment of the cost of textbooks, but it is not at all clear
that it would be anything more than an invitation to load onto textbooks
the costs of other operations.
The high cost of
textbooks reflects the shortened life of an edition, now typically only
three years. The secondary market in bookstores that repurchase texts
at a fraction of the original price and then resell them at a substantial
profit recycles texts without benefit to either publisher or author.
One copy may be purchased successively by 4 or 5 students, with only
the first sale earning the publisher and authors anything at all. Publishers
would respond positively to a plan that would return some of these resale
profits.
Richard T. Hull,
TAA Executive Director
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News, notes from
the Executive Director
The first two months
of my new appointment as Executive Director have passed, and I thought
a brief report to TAA members might be of interest and might give a
sense of the various things the organization is doing.
One project I've
undertaken is to digitize all the back issues of the TAA Report and
its successor, The Academic Author, to make them available in an online
archive to TAA members. I've been impressed, reading these documents,
with the quality of the articles and the range of topics, and much of
their news and advice remains of value today. As we turn increasingly
to a digital mode of service to members, it seems wise to make these
issues accessible to all who join. The scanning is slow, but the full
set should be available sometime this autumn.
Several news items
have commanded my attention, along with that of executive committee
members. The Google Print Library Project, undertaken by Google to scan
the contents of the Stanford, Michigan Oxford, Harvard and New York
City Libraries, has substantial potential for copyright violation. Google
has taken the position that fair use under copyright law permits it
to digitize these collections, including works still under copyright,
and make "snippets" or short sections of the works available
on line, without explicit permission of copyright holders. Some publishers
have been approached and have given permission; but works whose copyright
is held by authors, and works whose publishers have not been contacted,
are being digitized unless the copyright holder explicitly opts out
by November 1 of this year. TAA takes the position that copyright law
is being turned on its head, and that it should be the responsibility
of Google to request permission, and not the copyright holders responsibility
to take the initiative. A press release has stimulated several articles,
a sampling of which may be found on this page below.
Various operations
matters have commanded considerable attention these past months. Most
notable is the need to reduce the amount of staff time, estimated at
65%, that must be spent on Texty and McGuffey Awards. We have considered
various ways of streamlining the process, and have begun to experiment
with a couple. Referees for the awards are being asked to commit to
three years of reviewing texts for the awards in their fields; hopefully
that will cut down on the amount of time needed for recruiting judges
each year. We have explored ways of speeding the delivery of nomination
volumes to the judges by their publishers. We hope that these measures
will make it easier for staff to fulfill the duties associated with
these worthy awards while assuring high quality evaluations.
We have also streamlined
the telephone and computerized operations of the organization, with
potential savings in telephone costs of several thousand dollars each
year resulting from switching to Vonage, an internet-based long distance
service that provides unlimited long distance calling for a flat monthly
fee.
All this, on top
of the excitement of the Convention and concerns over our members and
convention site for next year in New Orleans has kept me well occupied!
Richard Hull
TAA Executive Director
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TAA Quoted in
AP Story on Google Print Library
TAA Executive Director
Richard Hull was quoted in a recent Associated Press story about the
Google Print Library Project. Read it here.
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TAA Offers Help
to Members Affected by Hurricane Katrina
Any TAA member that
needs help in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, please contact TAA headquarters
at (727) 563-0020 or TEXT@tampabay.rr.com
and TAA will do its best to assist you. TAA Executive Director Richard
Hull has offered to rent his three bedroom, two bath house, located
in Tallahassee, Florida, to a TAA member in need of temporary housing.
Please contact him
directly at rthull62@hotmail.com
or (850) 893-6539.
If any other TAA
members own property in areas that could be accessed by Katrina victims
for temporary housing, or can offer their assistance in any other way,
please contact Hull or TAA headquarters. At least nine TAA members live
in Louisiana, Alabama or Mississippi, the states hit hardest by Hurricane
Katrina.
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Renew Your Membership
Online!
TAA has just launched
a new online member form that will allow members to renew online using
a secure server. The form can also be used by new members. Check it
out in the TAA Member Center here.
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Make a Gift to
the TAA Foundation to Support Research on Textbook Author Diversity
The TAA Foundation
is asking for donations from members towards a $15,000 matching grant
from TAA. For every $1 you donate, TAA will match it. For example, your
donation of $25 will become $50. All gifts are tax-deductible. To make
a donation to the TAA Foundation, contact Janet Tucker at TAA headquarters
at (727) 563-0020 or mail your donation to TAA Foundation c/o TAA, P.O.
Box 76477, St. Petersburg, FL 33737-6477.
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New TAA Fax Number
TAA headquarters
switched its phone system over to a new broadband system. The phone
number will remain the same, but the new fax number is (727) 230-2409.
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