NPR takes a look at the growing popularity of “customized” college textbooks—textbooks that have pieces from different books sewn together, usually with a chapter or two by the professor teaching the class.
The books generally can’t be sold back to the college bookstore, nor can the student choose to buy them at another store. Professors who contribute chapters to the books are paid royalties. Is this a conflict of interest?
NPR interviewed one instructor who was in favor of “customized” textbooks. She said she had no problem requiring students to keep their textbooks, even after graduation. “Students have to trust us, they have to trust us that when we say, um, keep this textbook on your shelf, you’re going to need it. I have no problem requiring students to keep those textbooks,” she said.
That reminds us, we totally needed to go back and consult Architecture Theory since 1968, the other day. Oh wait, no. We did not.
Book Buying Among College Practices Under Scrutiny [NPR]
(Photo:ghindo)
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For the books that are binded rather cheaply, just cut off the binding, make copies for other kids in your class, and split the cost evenly for one purchase. Just punch holes in it and throw it in a three-ring binder. This way, you can tell the professor it is less likely to be damaged, and he won’t know who bought the originial book.
The school I’m going to actually has their own “editions” of textbooks printed for them. This makes it virtually impossible to buy or resell online because ISBN numbers don’t match. They’ll take a book from the publisher and request “selected chapters” for printing. They will then charge you full price for the book. My most recent purchase was for a small business class. The book was soft-bound, specifically printed for my school with select chapters and cost 145 bucks. I looked up the whole book online… yeah… 140. Rip Off.
Then I took another class (Business Professionalism) where the school did “select chapters” and professor contributed chapters as well. This was basically a soft-bound collection of photocopies. You can actually see where notes were written in to include certain pages and such. There were even a few pages where you could see PostIt notes left in placed over the text when they copied the pages for printing. Sad. Very, very sad.
I wish there was something that could be done to at least purchase the full books online, but you never know if you’re going to be missing something.
I just waded through my alma mater’s bookstore with my editor (we were there on company bidness) and she wanted to see what books they used for the journalism program. If I read the tea leaves right, she was not impressed and, dare I say, considered them basically useless after graduation. Either that or things are going to be really veiny.
I get every textbook possible off of dudes who sell them from India. For 30 bucks I get a 150 dollar textbook,that at the beginning of the next year/semester I resell for 35 bucks. Nobody cares that the pages aren’t as glossy or that there’s a big ass illegal in the US logo printed on the front.
Customized text books do feel like a scam to me. It is frustrating to spend $90 on a book, which I just did for this semester, that I will never use again and will not be able to sell back. The book was for a core class that has nothing to do with my major. So keeping this book would benefit me in no way. I attempted to find my books online for this semester. But since they were all either new editions or customized by the university I attend they would end up costing more online because of the shipping fees.
I wish there was something that could be done or that someone would step in and help all of us poor college students. I’m already paying thousands of dollars to go to school, how am I suppose to have the money to buy books too?
Blecch. This is a problem I’m all too familiar with. Every semester, without fail, at least one of my professors will insist that we NEED the new edition of such-and-such book (always customized to my particular campus of the university, so it’s un-resellable). Almost without fail, we never crack the book at all, or maybe once or twice for one specific chart or definition that the professor could easily just have photocopied and handed out.
I’m reading these posts with interest because I’m a professor who’d really like to save my students some money. But I’m stuck – I have to teach a really broad Humanities class about music and the visual arts. The textbooks that try to cover both do so badly, so I have a music text and an art text. But it’s only a one-semester course, so I’m not doing every chapter in both books. In this case, a custom text taking chapters from each book seems to make sense. No, a student won’t be able to resell on eBay, but if I keep the same chapters from semester to semester, they should be able to resell at the college bookstore if they want to.
As for generating more revenue for the college bookstore…I think in my case I would be taking revenue away. At my school, most students come in underprepared for college and they’re not computer savvy, so they’re not buying books online. (Before I get flamed for this, please know that I have to teach about half of my students how to use their email and when I’ve mentioned online purchasing to some students, they tell me they’ve never bought anything online because they don’t have credit or debit cards). So if most of them are stuck buying at the campus bookstore anyway, I might as well save them a few bucks. Right?
I teach at a local college, and while I understand the university’s reasoning for using custom publications (a custom text can draw from many different texts which lowers the total amount the student spends on texts for the class), I have to admit that I think these books are a scam. Many of the custom texts that I have to teach from are rife with spelling and formatting errors. They are also a way for the school to receive a higher percentage for textbook sales than they do by selling traditional texts. Still, this whole custom publication is kind of missing the point, as the textbook publishing industry in general is a scam. If you really want to save your money and avoid being scammed, either use the school’s library copy of the text or ask the professor if they have any additional copies of the texts. Many professors do have additional copies. Some would rather die a slow death than give away a copy of the text (this is generally against the university’s policy), but others, including myself, would happily give a copy of the text to an eager student in need.
I am returning to school after a 7 year hiatus to get a MBA, and right off the bat they hit us with a $90 custom book/reader… just for orientation!!!!!! Luckily they distribute it as a PDF, so I just went in on it with some other students. Everyone got an emailed copy of it to print out. I recommend going the shared route. If you can’t get an electronic file, be enterprising: buy the book, photocopy it and sell it at a discount to other students.
I just enrolled in a Masters program that has book prices included with the cost of tuition. From the research that I’ve done, the course is actually on par price-wise with other programs that require the students to purchase books on top of tuition. In one way you are shoehorned into all the materials, on the other hand if you do your research, you can save money and feel guilt-free in keeping your books.
@MMD: Is there a way that you could purchase books that span multiple semesters? There were a few rare times when I took classes such as Math 50 and Math 52, where the instructors worked together to teach the first and second half of the book so that we weren’t purchasing multiple books as we progressed. Perhaps the art book you teach out of, could be used for another art class if you were to converse with your colleagues. This might also help to increase enrollment in usually low student yield courses. i.e. “Since you already have this book, this other class also works off of the book, and you’ll be getting more units for your money.”
@fluiddruid: So what happens when you’re “stuck” with the world-acclaimed expert on the subjcet as your professor? You have to use a book by some other guy? What if nobody else has written a textbook on the subject?
This is not to say that the system does not get abused, and there are lots of bad textbooks by bad that are assigned only to support the prof’s ego and bank account. But a blanket ban could cause problems.
This is my first year of college and the books aren’t too expensive this semester. Most are about $50 either through the bookstore or online. I got my list of books, went into the bookstore and then wrote down their prices. Then I looked online, Amazon, Half, Ebay, and a nice Google search. I weighed the price differences versus shipping and when I’d get the books and made my decision. Most were cheaper online with my trial Amazon Prime membership, but one was cheaper at the campus bookstore so I got that one there. I suggest trying that. It wasn’t really much work at all. In total, it took about an hour.
The ones that really burn me are the required “bundles” of textbooks along with “web access” (or even worse, e-textbooks) that costs between $15 and $50 more than just the text. The web access can vary from a terrible site featuring a few practice problems to a full fledged teacher-in-a-box in which all homework, quizzes, and exams are administered through the site.
I’m being forced to pay for a computer to effectively do all of the teaching PLUS a lazy scumbag that’s making me pay them twice to do their job. And then they have the nerve to demand that I screen my work with Turnitin.com.
I accidentally bought an old version of an Official My School Office 2003 book that had been updated this year (no less). My teacher and I didn’t notice until the 5th week (right before the midterms) because all my homework matched up. It took until the midterm to find a change. It was a blank page inserted, of course.
Thieves, every single one of them.
@c26nyc: It’s because they change the pictures – let’s not even talk about where the used books go – there must be millions but they never seem to have them in any bookstore. On the other side of the coin, a friend works in a big bookstore’s medical text dept. & people actually want the used/outdated text…Somehow in medicine I don’t think this is a good idea…
My favorite professor assigned these customized textbooks–then told us to borrow it for free from the school library and photocopy it to save money. The reason for assigning a customized textbook was because it included essays and short articles that are difficult to obtain and would have cost students much more money to buy on their own.
This is fundamentally an entirely ignorant analysis. Customized textbooks reliably save students money. They are uniformly cheaper than full editions and that price break is always about as much as you would get back on the sale of the book. A resale value that is also completely unreliable.
@3DRAGE: That’s a great idea – I really wish I could. Unfortunately, my department doesn’t offer any subsequent courses that connect to what I’m doing, despite my efforts to expand course offerings. Which is why I’m looking for another job – but that’s another story…
@BIGGYFRED: If you’d read as many blatantly plagiarized papers as I have, you’d understand why Turnitin exists. I usually don’t need Turnitin to spot these papers, but using it gives me the official backing I need to confidently bust the offenders.
When I was doing engineering, some of the professors would tell us not to bother with the text book because they are a rip off. They would give out photocopies of ‘notes’ and they would cover everything needed.
Other profs would tell you to buy the old one if you could find it and would reference both editions page numbers.
I had one prof who wrote a book (piece of poorly written crap) and it was a required text. So I did what i usually did with overpriced texts that I didnt want to keep for reference(very few)……….
My solution to the $100 – $250 texts was to buy the text or borrow a copy, then load up a copy card and set the page to legal size and about 10% reduction. It usually took under one hour to copy a full book cover to cover. Then I would go to staples and they would bind it for me. Instant text for under $20.
I saved thousands doing that.
/cant stand getting ripped off
Sounds like my school’s course packs. They’re basically 100+ pages xeroxed together. Oh, and they cost $97. Huge ripoff.
Another ripoff are the “clickers” that you use to digitally answer questions in class. They cost $50, and you can’t sell them back to the store.
@KROMELIZARD:
How is it fundamentally ignorant to conclude that forcing students to buy from only one source saves them money? This may be true if you want to compare extremes (new full edition, undiscounted vs a “custom” textbook), however most internet savvy students should be smart enough to get it significantly cheaper. People are stating that requiring “custom” textbooks effectively removes all possibility of competition. That doesn’t sound like such a great deal to me.
@KROMELIZARD: I do hope you are being scarcastic! The customized book I had to buy for this semester cost me $30 more than it would have cost me to just buy the two books that the professor/department lovingly ripped chapters out of. But, of course, I NEEDED the customized book. Which, by the way, has the worlds worst index. Also I will not be able to sell this book back as they will release a new edition of it next year.
When I was in college a couple of years ago, a lot of my professors would just put all the articles we needed to read on Blackboard in .PDF format and have us print them out.
Ugh, course packs were the bane of my college existence! $50 for a bunch of really, really crappy xerox copies of ancient articles and odd pages of random textbooks that were barely legible… I’d get eyestrain with every assignment! I have an instructor now who makes up his own custom lab books that he charges $20.00 each half-semester for, in addition to the overly expensive and somewhat outdated textbook he uses (this is in a Linux class). The lab book is mostly crappy screenshots + exhortations to do exercises out of the textbook, and features special “turn in” checklists that you have to give to him in order to get credit for the labs. AND to make it even more painful, half of his custom-designed labs are out of date as we’re using updated versions of the distro, and he hasn’t taken the five minutes to update the lab books even though he runs them off his own laser printer!
@BIGGYFRED:
I’m teaching in a program that is using one of those “teacher-in-a-box” websites as a workbook for the students. The benefits are twofold: one, it saves paper; and two, it frees up time that graduate students would have spent grading workbooks.
I still have to grade tests, quizzes and papers; plan all my lessons out; and actually do the teaching.
And generally, it’s not the person doing the grading who picked the textbook, either.
I understand it’s frustrating and expensive, and I’m not defending it unequivocally. I just prefer not to be called a lazy scumbag.
Umm. I live in Canada and this is very common. “Customized” textbook makes it sound way too fancy. It’s just a bunch of photocopied pages bound together from different places. The royalities ARE paid and this makes up much of the cost. Coursepacks, they are called, are difficult to sell because sometimes they change every year. They ARE frequently cheaper than a textbook, but less worth it, because at least textbooks can be sold. And often, you need to purchase a coursepack along with another textbook. They are just a way for a professor to compile sources they feel are useful, for a very obscure class, for example. Or obscure sources for a not obscure class.
@MMD: About those students who don’t purchase online because they don’t hace credit/debit cards- have you suggested that they buy an AmEx/Visa/Mastercard gift card to use online? It’s essentially a prepaid credit card.
I teach at a very large university, and worse than the highly customized texts you mention are the textbooks that are customized only minimally, but still segment the new and used book markets. For the intro psych course I taught, a single textbook was chosen by committee every two years, and publishers would compete to “add value” by allowing customization. The only thing: the customization was only a few low-quality photocopied appendices at the end. No actual content pages changed. But despite the fact that those appendices never were incorporated into our curriculum, most teachers saw it as a great deal because now our customized book has the school colors on the cover (Hurrah!). Meanwhile, our customized texts can only be resold within the university system, and only for the two years we use that book. A complete waste in every way, but many teachers were convinced that it added value.
@PHOBS & @DELICATEDISARRAY
Because I know my busines better than you do. Really, textbook whining is hilarious, because it’s clearly motivated by the belief that people should be getting the books for free like in high school.
@KROMELIZARD: I have no problem with having to purchase my text books. Usually what I am getting in college is an up to date book, written by a person who is an expert in the area. There are also some books I don’t mind paying the big bucks for, I know there are only so many printed making the amount to go around minimal, plus when the book could be used as a weight and I’ll need it for years to come- it becomes an investment. But, a sophomore level core course’s book shouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg. And, when I will not need said book ever again, but am stuck with it because the professor insists on adding a new blank page to the book every year… well that is a waste of money.
@kromelizard: As of quality and price: the textbook industry is a monster — the good kind! Evidence shows that two-year rotations of editions, subtle changes in the text and photos, and ever increasing prices are met with unwavering enthusiasm by the consumers. Ask any informed college student across the United States.
—
In my opinion, if the textbook industry isn’t willing to play it fair, then they might as well be forced give the books to us for free. Why are US students expected to pay “full price” whereas international students given substantial subsidies (relatively speaking)? I don’t buy the “local economy” argument for many reasons. It’s unbelievable!
I just bought all of my books online, some old editions and some new, and saved about $150 or so. I would have saved a lot more if one of my classes hadn’t required a book that I couldn’t find for more than $20 off its list price…but oh well. Textbooks are a HUGE scam, and the school bookstores are too. I just decided to say fuck it about having books on time and try my luck with the internet. I’m definitely glad not to have any course packs this year, those are absurdly overpriced.
I agree completely. Right now im in a class that requires you buy a text book that includes an online code to access the required assignments. They sell the book used, but then you have to go buy a code for like 40 more dollars, its complete bullshit. I had a book one semester that cost 187 dollars and couldn’t be sold back because the professor used the newest edition each year the course was only offered 1 semester each year. the only books I have ever kept that were required we for my philosophy classes (7 separate books for one class, each cost between 4 and 15 dollars from any book store) and some writing reference books that wasn’t required, but very helpful. Ive gone semesters without even opening the “required reading” and still getting B’s but couldn’t return the book because I didn’t want to rick needing it one day.
The one class I really hated was an English class where the professor made a deal with some stand alone book store to carry the books she required for the course (there were 5 of them).The book store was highly political (and I was firmly against their beliefs) but the books couldn’t be purchased anywhere else (2 were special edition texts not available online)so I got caught between funding a group of people who I morally was against, or taking a huge hit on my grade. I bought one from them (the project related to that book was worth about 15 percent of my grade) and the other I just took a hit for. I just couldn’t believe the teacher was forcing her political beliefs on the students by making them shop at the store. (and yes, it was forcing her beliefs as you couldn’t leave the store without being handed a flier for some rally, and they would stuff you bag with fliers and garbage propaganda writings as they rang you up.
From my experience the only times I saw custom textbooks were for English courses. In those cases they worked as an alternative to an anthology, 80% of which would never be used. The custom book on the other hand, had only the content needed for the course and was much cheaper than the anthology. In the end they still cost less than the anthology even after resale. I do see however, how the conflict of interest is present. In that scenario couldn’t the teacher leave their own work out of the anthology and distribute it as paper handout during class?
@kromelizard: as DELICATEDISARRAY stated, I do not mind buying my textbooks. What I do mind is paying $90 for 8 paged. 8 PAGES! The book in question was for orientation.
Are you seriously trying to justify student’s paying upwards of $200 for a “custom”? Last quarter I had to buy a customized developmental psychology book for $175 because it was a new edition. Would you like to know the substantial changes? The editor wrote a letter to her deceases mother and changed 4 pictures. My psych teacher admitted this to us and told us to try and find the older copy online.
Or what about the customized statistics book that I had to buy for $150? The only difference between the customized book and the original, widely used book was one chapter. The original book was only $70. Oh, and guess what? I can’t sell it back because there are so many errors in the new chapter that they are making a new edition.
If you can logically explain to me how this is saving me money, I will stop “textbook whining” and shout to the world about how customized textbooks are the way to go.
EGAKINO, I don’t doubt you and other students are paying more in tuition. But as for the book, per the example I cited, you guys are paying less. Take the value I paid in 1982 dollars and add the inflation rate to it. That would be a $300-350 book today. None of you are paying those rates for textbooks that are custom made.
I do have one suggestion — http://www.bookmooch.com. This is a book sharing site. Give a book, receive a book. Offerer pays the postage to ship it. The receiver gets the book for free. Were college students to put every book they did not need up there the impact to the publishers would be pretty dramatic. As an instructor I end up with extra copies that I put up on the site.
Axiomatic really has the future of what textbooks will be about. No publishers. Its on a CD. You buy it for $10-15 the author(s) get the lionshare and the students save their money. My fall semester course will be on CD, no books.
Here’s something from the other side:
First off, I am Canadian, so my situation is a little different, but I did work for the largest Canadian producers of these coursepacks until 4 months ago.
Here are some of the nuts and bolts from the other side:
Cost: the largest cost to produce these kits was the copyright. We cleared the copyright on everything, unlike some shadier places that would just photocopy out of text books and resell. for a typical 200 page kit (about average) it would cost between $7 and $10. Printing and binding would be about the same, let’s say $7 for a 200 pager.
Kickbacks: this was a very shady deal with some profs. I only saw this in a few cases, but it was almost exclusively with the law and business school, where the professor would publish custom articles, and have seperate payment than the regular channels (cancopy provides a royalty payment service) This increased the price to the student considerably, usually by $5 or $10.
Markup: this was usually done through administration fees and pure markup, so something that would cost between $15 and $20 for printing and copyright would have a $40 price tag.
Resale: was not done through our bookstore, but there was a resale market through flyers and private sale. About 70% of these packs remained unchanged from year to year.
Piracy: we budgeted about 70% of the class enrolement would buy the coursekit, and about 30% would share or photocopy another copy.
I hope this helped.
A coursepack is different than a custom textbook, though, which I think a lot of people are confusing. To me, a coursepack is a collection of photocopied selections from a wide variety of sources–usually single chapters from books, journal articles, and the like. They are things that would be difficult for the students to access otherwise (subscription journals, out of print books) and usually under $50 for a semester’s worth of materials, or put online on Blackboard. Coursepacks are awesome and really do get used in classes. A custom textbook is when the department/professor chooses to have the publisher print a version with only selected chapters. These are generally a rip-off, as they are priced the same as, or only marginally less than, the full book.
For the past year (but sadly no more), my university’s position was that, as graduate students, we were paying enough as it was. Coursepacks were free in the Arts faculty. It was so good. Now, though, they cost, but at $35 for the semester, I’m happy to pay.
For the Aussies, textbookexchange.com.au is pretty good. It’s still smallish, so the selection isn’t great if you’re doing a highly specialized subject, but I’ve sold a few books and bought a few books, and overall saved myself a couple hundred. Half.com was my favourite in the US.
@NinaHagen: You might be surprised by this, but one of my most treasured medical texts is William Ossler’s The Principles and Practice of Medicine, printed in 1892. Ironically, I find myself referring back to it on the more difficult cases when doing a differential dx, particularly when “modern” medicine has failed. Some of the suggestions are purely laughable, while others are quite insightful, and I’ve found some of them to be more effective and less costly than popular treatments today.
@kromelizard: NO, it has nothing to do with the desire of textbooks to be free, rather it has a desire for the textbooks to be reasonable in cost. Is it really necessary for every single page of a textbook to be printed on 28 lb semigloss paper with 4-color press? Absolutely not. I’ve done enough publishing in my days to know the shortcuts to keeping costs down while still producing a quality product. There’s no need for half the extra crap they’re throwing in textbooks these days. CD-ROMs, internet websites w/accounts tied to the individual book, “course packs” of figures from the book with lines next to them to “take notes” during lectures — all useless junk. Often, the “value added” services and content distracts students from the material they’re attempting to learn. I have a biochemistry book which has 1/8 to 1/4 page photos of various chemists on every other page. Guess what? I could give a shit less. I’m trying to learn biochemistry, not the history of chemistry. If I’m interested in who discovered what, I’ll go to the end-of-the-chapter citations & references and go look them up.
I did have one class where the prof had made a customized textbook, but was a nice guy and actually had the entire book in a .PDF we could download. It was a full 800+page textbook, just in .PDF form. Very useful and we all appreciated their efforts and thoughfulness.
One other comment which I forgot to make was that there is one critical problem with the professors putting in their own content into textbooks — accuracy & peer review. Most textbooks are written by a couple of authors and reviewed/revised by many others. When a professor inserts their own content into a textbook, it doesn’t go through the same scrutiny that other material in the same book must undergo.
Yes ABSOLUTE SCAM! I bought a $145 accounting book customized to my schools course (for a one quarter class), had the school name and art on front and only had selected chapters in it so that they eliminated selling it to someone not at that school. Then this book had the working papers after each chapter to do the problems in it. Then TO MAKE ALL THINGS WORSE it came with a keycode to do the online problem that only came with a new book and could not be purchased on the side, also the keycode could only be used one quarter. Therefore the only acceptable book for the course was to buy it new from the school bookstore and eat 100% of the cost at the end. Big ripoff….especially for a community college, my textbook cost has sometimes been near the tuition cost.
I’ve now had at least 3 courses similar to this situation, and probably 5 or 6 textbooks in two years of college I can’t sell because they are “outdated”. Textbook costs is a scam. We’ll just see how things go at the University this year…
I had a customized textbook for my communication class back in 1996. The book store said I couldn’t sell it back, so a friend of mine and I kicked it to pieces. The instructor from that class saw us doing this and said that they could in fact be sold back, and that what I was doing was really disrespectful.
Well, hell, that isn’t what they told me at the book store where I was just a few minutes before, and fuck, NO ONE respected that guy. I had two campus jobs with two supervisors who rarely if ever spoke with one another. Both had occasion to meet this guy on a semi-regular basis, and both, when his name came up, said the exact same thing. “What an asshole.”
So I didn’t feel bad about it. Also it was only 18 bucks.
Also, in a marketing class I took via correspondence (due to scheduling conflicts) I had to watch a propaganda video for the textbook industry. They went on and on about all the costs of producing a textbook, like the costs of graphics and photographs. They showed a few examples on screen.
The problem was, at least some of the things they showed were not from textbooks. They showed some images of the 1991 issue of Popular Science, from the article about the YF-22 vs YF-23 competition.
And that magazine only cost 2 bucks!
Oh, and I think this may have been posted in the last text book thread, but what the hell:
[www.textbookleague.org]
I teach college courses, and I really dislike the textbook racket. Publishers typically put out new editions every 3 years. They also do ad-ons, like errata or magazines, that allow them to bundle a textbook in-between editions as a “2007 edition.” Finally, in case you were hoping to buy used books, the publishers will buy up as many used books as they can, to insure that everyone is buying new books.
The professor-written texts, or the university press books have their place. I’m not saying that it sucks that a professor is making royalties off of his students, but at least the content is directed for the course. Good professors will try to get away with Kinko’s packets, if they can. Bad professors will make everyone buy a book they wrote, ten years ago, every semester.
My advice, hit the internet and buy used. That way, your professor doesn’t see any royalties, and you get the book for at least 50% cover. Win-win, all around.
And, you avoid the 25% mark-up that all university bookstores add to the cover price.
@lincolnparadox:
“the publishers will buy up as many used books as they can, to insure that everyone is buying new books.”
And then they can claim that as part of the OMG UNBELIEVABLY HIGH cost of producing textbooks.
My favorite textbook was a $30 custom job. The professor worked with the publisher to extract the 20% he wanted from a $90 book, so it was a win for the published too. Oh, and it was about a centimeter thick, instead of a 5-kilo dead weight.
Meanwhile this year I paid $90 for a used book, which was all the bookstore cared to display. The book is $120 new, and they bought them back for $30 last semester.
There’s a decent argument for course readers: they’re often filled with canonical, field-defining articles that are hard to get in one place. So if the student is going to pursue postgrad education in that specific field, they can be helpful.
But: they’re still a total scam. There’s no reason that the PDFs of the articles can’t just be put online for downloading. That’s what I do for all of my courses, and it seems to work fine – students can print them out or not, download them or not, etc.