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Textbooks in the News

Thursday, May 2, 2002

High textbook prices vex students

By Alex Bleyleben
The Stanford Daily

With the average undergraduate expected to spend $1,125 on textbooks and school supplies next year, many students questioned the pricing practices of the Stanford Bookstore, the primary supplier of books and course materials to students across campus. The market for custom course texts and new and used textbooks reached $5.2 billion last year in the United States, with students doling out an average of $66.08 per new book. Student complaints range from the buy-back policy to the prices of textbooks in general.

“Books represent one of the most significant living costs for students on campus,” said newly elected ASSU senator Dan Wendlandt, a freshman whose campaign platform for a seat in the senate included measures to reduce the cost of books. “Anyone who has sold a book back for $10 and seen it on the shelf the next day for $40 knows that the Bookstore is ripping us off. There must be a better way.” ASSU President-Elect and Vice-President-Elect Mónica Henestroza and Nick Rodriguez made lowering prices at the Bookstore a large part of their recent campaign.

But Bookstore Textbook Manager Kevin O’Rourke said that the textbook department is the least profitable division of the store, and that it barely covers its costs. The Bookstore makes a 25 percent margin on most books it sells, five percent higher than the standard 20 percent listed by many publishers as the “list price.”

Why the difference?

“To a certain extent, it’s the seven percent rebate we give to students,” said O’Rourke. “We also have a cost of shipping that isn’t necessarily calculated in [the publishers’ list price]. But 25 percent is pretty much an industry standard.”

But not everyone agrees.

“The Bookstore takes advantage of its monopoly and often charges significantly higher prices for new books than local book retailers or online bookstores,” said Wendlandt.

O’Rourke also points to payroll, rent and the store’s inability to bargain with publishers as a few circumstances leading to high textbook prices.

“It’s pretty much a monopoly,” he said. “The publishers that make textbooks are the only ones who make them. One of the problems that the industry has had and is trying to address is that certain large stores like Barnes & Noble may get a better price than we would get.”

Sales and Marketing Manager Jef Friedel sympathized with students.

“I was in the same boat when I was in school. I didn’t understand [the pricing] until I understood the business and realized what the publishers are doing. There’s no control that the individual bookstore has over what the publisher is going to dole out to them.”

It may be difficult for students to win a battle to lower new textbook prices; however, many point towards the Bookstore’s book-buying practices as an area with potential for change.

“[The Bookstore] buys books really low and sells them really high,” Rodriguez. “If you offer them [a price] somewhere in the middle, everyone is better off because you cut out the middleman. The big challenge for us is to go to our business arm, Stanford Student Enterprises, so that we can come up with a feasible program that offers an alternative to the Bookstore.”

O’Rourke maintains that standard store practice is to pay half of a book’s original value and then mark it up to 75 percent of the original, but frustrated students say they have not seen large financial returns on their used books.

“Although the Bookstore understandably needs to make a profit on used books, it seems like they pay students one-tenth of the original price and then sell them back to other students at almost the original price,” said freshman Kea Gilbert. “It’s so ridiculous.”

According to Wendlandt, efforts should center around both creating an independent used-book exchange program and also on pressuring the store to lower prices.

“I believe combating overpricing at the Bookstore is a great opportunity for the ASSU to follow through on its stated mission of representing the interests of every student on campus,” said Wendlandt. “It is an area where ASSU resources can be realistically and effectively applied to create tangible benefits for all students.” He also believes that a competing used-book exchange program could be set up using the Internet.

More reasonable arguments centered on the belief that a profit should not be made from required course materials at a non-profit institution.

“The Bookstore should be a service to students, and after covering its costs it should not be a money making enterprise,” said freshman Rob Gibson.

O’Rourke agreed that the Bookstore maintains a virtual monopoly on campus and that its goal is to make money, but stated that its prices are comparable to most retailers.

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