Compares textbook prices on new, used, ebooks and rentals
January 21, 2016 8:44 AM Subscribe
Was Textbookr taken?
posted by jcruelty at 9:03 AM on January 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by jcruelty at 9:03 AM on January 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
Cool. Stewart's Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 7th edition has a low of $31 and a high of ... $321 from Cengage. No, I lie, some place called Skyo wants to charge more than Cengage!
Although when I clicked through on that $31 price, it was actually $54, used.
And they quoted $38 on half.com but clicking through got a price of $34. So that's weird. Except actually on the half.com prices at least it turns out that they're adding in the postage, which is nice.
(My god, they're releasing the 8th edition already? Isn't Stewart dead?)
posted by leahwrenn at 9:23 AM on January 21, 2016
Although when I clicked through on that $31 price, it was actually $54, used.
And they quoted $38 on half.com but clicking through got a price of $34. So that's weird. Except actually on the half.com prices at least it turns out that they're adding in the postage, which is nice.
(My god, they're releasing the 8th edition already? Isn't Stewart dead?)
posted by leahwrenn at 9:23 AM on January 21, 2016
I've always been a big fan of bigwords.com, which also handles price comparison for selling books once you're done with them.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:25 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:25 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
a ~$150 "custom" book (Chapters 1-12 of Book X, Chapters 2-4 of Y, a journal article written by the instructor) that cannot be rented or resold.
I don't see why it can't be resold, just probably it's hard to resell it off campus. But I'm pretty sure when we were using a custom paperback calc text (yep, for chunks of Stewart) it was sold at least back to the bookstore by students, and probably back and forth to each other as well.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:27 AM on January 21, 2016
I don't see why it can't be resold, just probably it's hard to resell it off campus. But I'm pretty sure when we were using a custom paperback calc text (yep, for chunks of Stewart) it was sold at least back to the bookstore by students, and probably back and forth to each other as well.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:27 AM on January 21, 2016
And anyway, do you think it's better to ask students to buy textbook X at $largePrice (to only use chapters 1--4) and textbook Y at $maybeSmallerPrice, again to only use chapters 3&5?
I'm asking this seriously.
Clearly, it would be best if we all used cheap texts. But often, the good texts are not the cheap texts. I tried that last semester, using a free text, but it turned out I really didn't think it was as helpful to my students as the expensive text I used in an earlier semester. Do my students get $230 more value out of the more expensive text? I don't know. But it for sure does a better job...
posted by leahwrenn at 9:31 AM on January 21, 2016
I'm asking this seriously.
Clearly, it would be best if we all used cheap texts. But often, the good texts are not the cheap texts. I tried that last semester, using a free text, but it turned out I really didn't think it was as helpful to my students as the expensive text I used in an earlier semester. Do my students get $230 more value out of the more expensive text? I don't know. But it for sure does a better job...
posted by leahwrenn at 9:31 AM on January 21, 2016
Isn't Stewart dead?
Only since December 3, 2014. That's nothing. The 5th edition of Prosser and Keeton on Torts was published in 1984, twelve years after Prosser died. This was followed by Prosser, Wade and Schwartz's Torts, now in its 12th edition (2010, 38 years after Prosser's death), for the bargain price of $187.
12 editions and $187 for an area of the law that changes quite slowly—virtually not at all if you limit it to the material covered in a first year torts class—and is built almost entirely on excerpts from public domain source materials. But that's a problem common to almost all law textbooks.
posted by jedicus at 9:42 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Only since December 3, 2014. That's nothing. The 5th edition of Prosser and Keeton on Torts was published in 1984, twelve years after Prosser died. This was followed by Prosser, Wade and Schwartz's Torts, now in its 12th edition (2010, 38 years after Prosser's death), for the bargain price of $187.
12 editions and $187 for an area of the law that changes quite slowly—virtually not at all if you limit it to the material covered in a first year torts class—and is built almost entirely on excerpts from public domain source materials. But that's a problem common to almost all law textbooks.
posted by jedicus at 9:42 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
apropos of nothing I would like to mention samizdat, the practice in the old Soviet Union of individuals covertly producing and distributing copies of censored or otherwise restricted material. The wikipedia page for samizdat dryly notes that "The purpose and methods of samizdat may contrast with the purpose of the concept of copyright."
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:44 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:44 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
I haven't read a screed on textbook prices in awhile. Are digital books and the Apple textbook... thingy changing anything?
posted by Phreesh at 9:48 AM on January 21, 2016
posted by Phreesh at 9:48 AM on January 21, 2016
Since, I'm taking classes this has been a constant hassle. I rent, buy the international additions, or borrow. The publishers are doing their best to kill the secondary market with paid online content. The latest twist is to charge as much for the online part as the book.
I point this gouging out every class review. Very pointedly. As much as 50% of a review is talking about the prices for class materials.
Note, ratemyprofessor.com has key words in the reviews about book requirements.
posted by KaizenSoze at 9:51 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
I point this gouging out every class review. Very pointedly. As much as 50% of a review is talking about the prices for class materials.
Note, ratemyprofessor.com has key words in the reviews about book requirements.
posted by KaizenSoze at 9:51 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
My students can get one semester's access to an obnoxious-to-use eBook version of their textbook for only $84! So not really no.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:52 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:52 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Now they have a flunkie reach out to the course instructor so they can gin up a ~$150 "custom" book (Chapters 1-12 of Book X, Chapters 2-4 of Y, a journal article written by the instructor) that cannot be rented or resold.
The complicity of instructors in this kind of thing is infuriating.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:08 AM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]
The complicity of instructors in this kind of thing is infuriating.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:08 AM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]
In my undergrad I had a friend who would just get the textbooks from the course reserve at the library when he actually needed them and wouldn't buy the textbooks otherwise. He may be the smartest guy I know so I followed his example as best as I could. There were a couple of classes where I'd end up buying the book a week or two before the final exam because it would be open book and a couple where we were actually using the textbook each class so I ended up buying the book but I saved a lot of money by only buying the books when necessary.
I also freaked out some classmates by cutting up some of my bigger textbooks into discrete chapters so I wouldn't have to lug the whole thing around.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:12 AM on January 21, 2016
I also freaked out some classmates by cutting up some of my bigger textbooks into discrete chapters so I wouldn't have to lug the whole thing around.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:12 AM on January 21, 2016
Phreesh: If P.T. Barnum were alive today, he'd put up signs saying, "This Way to the eBook".
In short, in some cases digital books actually cost more!
posted by Chitownfats at 12:22 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
In short, in some cases digital books actually cost more!
posted by Chitownfats at 12:22 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
I used to work in this industry, but in editorial, not in sales; we got to receive a lot of the complaints about price but had little we could do about it, as pricing came down from the C-suite via the finance department, and regular "automatic price increases" were pushed through regularly across entire product lines, usually twice a year. Sometimes an editor could fight to hold the price of a book at its current level, but that was about as far as the ability to affect anything went.
It's a weird industry, since the decision maker (sometimes an individual professor, sometimes a committee within a particular department) and the purchaser (the student) are almost completely divorced from each other, which, without powerful counterincentives, pushes the product toward meeting the needs of the ones who make the decision rather than the ones who bear the cost burden. It's also experiencing a lot of upheaval because for decades it was a reliably profitable industry, and the push toward ebooks and other limited-access digital products is an attempt to recoup the losses that arose out of the vast increase in the ease of acquiring used books with the rise of the internet (which then led to shorter revision cycles in an attempt to maintain profit levels, which led to higher levels of anger and further drops in sales of new books, and so on).
There is awareness within the major houses that pricing has been and continues to be a huge problem, but I think the allure of the short-term profit (even if it pushes the business into a death spiral) is too much for their management to resist, especially since the biggest actors are either enormous public companies beholden to Wall Street or owned by private equity investors.
Needless to say, I feel a lot less cognitive dissonance in my life since leaving academic publishing...
posted by Kosh at 2:23 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's a weird industry, since the decision maker (sometimes an individual professor, sometimes a committee within a particular department) and the purchaser (the student) are almost completely divorced from each other, which, without powerful counterincentives, pushes the product toward meeting the needs of the ones who make the decision rather than the ones who bear the cost burden. It's also experiencing a lot of upheaval because for decades it was a reliably profitable industry, and the push toward ebooks and other limited-access digital products is an attempt to recoup the losses that arose out of the vast increase in the ease of acquiring used books with the rise of the internet (which then led to shorter revision cycles in an attempt to maintain profit levels, which led to higher levels of anger and further drops in sales of new books, and so on).
There is awareness within the major houses that pricing has been and continues to be a huge problem, but I think the allure of the short-term profit (even if it pushes the business into a death spiral) is too much for their management to resist, especially since the biggest actors are either enormous public companies beholden to Wall Street or owned by private equity investors.
Needless to say, I feel a lot less cognitive dissonance in my life since leaving academic publishing...
posted by Kosh at 2:23 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Part of the problem is that instructors have no skin in the game. There's no cost to them for assigning a $250 textbook/tutorial (just paid that for an intro to computing course for my daughter--the materials not the course).
A good number of colleges, foundations and even governmental organizations are building enthusiasm around zero-textbook cost courses using open educational resources, but it's still nascent. Students seek these courses out, which is finally helping because they are actively avoiding the classes with the expensive books...and those instructors are starting to lose out.
posted by idb at 3:31 PM on January 21, 2016
A good number of colleges, foundations and even governmental organizations are building enthusiasm around zero-textbook cost courses using open educational resources, but it's still nascent. Students seek these courses out, which is finally helping because they are actively avoiding the classes with the expensive books...and those instructors are starting to lose out.
posted by idb at 3:31 PM on January 21, 2016
What are these "textbooks" of which you speak, earth creature?
posted by erniepan at 3:59 PM on January 21, 2016
posted by erniepan at 3:59 PM on January 21, 2016
"automatic price increases" were pushed through regularly across entire product lines, usually twice a year
To conveniently coincide with the fall and spring semesters, I presume.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 4:07 PM on January 21, 2016
To conveniently coincide with the fall and spring semesters, I presume.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 4:07 PM on January 21, 2016
Part of the problem is that instructors have no skin in the game.
What's worse is that both editorial and sales employees are incentivized to court decision makers heavily, inviting them to do reviews, focus groups, content writing for supplementary materials, etc. In a lot of cases the feedback we would receive would be perfunctory stuff that was clearly just filled out to get the honorarium check or the gift card or whatever was being offered at the time.
That's not to slander all instructors: it was not unheard of to hear feedback that price was a factor in their decision and that they didn't want to unduly burden their students. For some adoptions, a high price could be a dealbreaker. There were some that really cared about that aspect of it, and more as time went on and the issue became more pointed. But there were a lot that didn't, and these same old people would be targeted for reviews year after year because they controlled, say, a 3,000 copy adoption of Intro Psychology or something along those lines.
To conveniently coincide with the fall and spring semesters, I presume.
Precisely.
posted by Kosh at 6:50 PM on January 21, 2016
What's worse is that both editorial and sales employees are incentivized to court decision makers heavily, inviting them to do reviews, focus groups, content writing for supplementary materials, etc. In a lot of cases the feedback we would receive would be perfunctory stuff that was clearly just filled out to get the honorarium check or the gift card or whatever was being offered at the time.
That's not to slander all instructors: it was not unheard of to hear feedback that price was a factor in their decision and that they didn't want to unduly burden their students. For some adoptions, a high price could be a dealbreaker. There were some that really cared about that aspect of it, and more as time went on and the issue became more pointed. But there were a lot that didn't, and these same old people would be targeted for reviews year after year because they controlled, say, a 3,000 copy adoption of Intro Psychology or something along those lines.
To conveniently coincide with the fall and spring semesters, I presume.
Precisely.
posted by Kosh at 6:50 PM on January 21, 2016
Part of the problem is that instructors have no skin in the game. There's no cost to them for assigning a $250 textbook/tutorial (just paid that for an intro to computing course for my daughter--the materials not the course).
No, this is absolutely *not* the case: a too-expensive text and the students won't buy it, or if they do, won't use it because they want to sell it at the end of the course. And I'm really not happy burdening my students.
The big problem is that finding out the suggested retail price is very difficult -- it can often double between semesters. I try to stick to the same anthology, year after year, so that they'll be able to find used copies, but that leads to a certain sameness and dullness.
Even though I've tried very hard to stick with usable, affordable texts, I inevitably wind up with half of the class working with randomly selected 60 year old editions (so useful, when the plays are in FUCKING TRANSLATION) or, even better, online copies. Most of the first years, of course, don't bother doing the reading at all...that's okay, I'll just look at Sparksnotes the night before the exam, that's what I've always done...and then they wind up, furious and in tears, in my office a few weeks later. How COULD they have failed??? They ALWAYS get As in English...
posted by jrochest at 9:38 PM on January 21, 2016
No, this is absolutely *not* the case: a too-expensive text and the students won't buy it, or if they do, won't use it because they want to sell it at the end of the course. And I'm really not happy burdening my students.
The big problem is that finding out the suggested retail price is very difficult -- it can often double between semesters. I try to stick to the same anthology, year after year, so that they'll be able to find used copies, but that leads to a certain sameness and dullness.
Even though I've tried very hard to stick with usable, affordable texts, I inevitably wind up with half of the class working with randomly selected 60 year old editions (so useful, when the plays are in FUCKING TRANSLATION) or, even better, online copies. Most of the first years, of course, don't bother doing the reading at all...that's okay, I'll just look at Sparksnotes the night before the exam, that's what I've always done...and then they wind up, furious and in tears, in my office a few weeks later. How COULD they have failed??? They ALWAYS get As in English...
posted by jrochest at 9:38 PM on January 21, 2016
So what's the right answer?
(1) Use a crappy, free textbook.
--This does not serve the students' educational needs.
(2) Use an old edition of a good textbook.
--I've tried this, and it's problematic: the bookstore won't let you adopt an old edition, because they can't get it from the publisher, and if you just let students use any edition they can find, then when you assign exercises 2, 4, 9, and 27, the exercises will have changed from edition to edition (because of course they will, right), so then you have to type out the exercises or whatever, which is time I could be spending doing something more useful for them, and then it turns out that changing from edition to edition, they actually added a useful example...so it ends up being a huge hassle.
(3) Use the new edition
---it costs a lot, which is problematic.
(4) Use the new edition, but go with the publisher's option to use a cut-down edition or a loose-leaf edition or (ugh) the ebook version
--people complain that they can't resell the book, or (loose-leaf) it's not a good long-term book, or (ebook) not everyone has access to an ebook reader. And used copies are hard to get.
And I like to at least think that students might use their textbooks after the end of the semester. At least with calculus books, you often get three semesters out of your $250 book. (At the expense of breaking your back carrying around an 8 lb book in your backpack.)
There continues to be a lot of discussion about textbook prices---on a mailing list I'm on, someone was just asking about whether a free calculus book was any good. And it is something that thoughtful instructors do consider when choosing which book to adopt---but I'm not going to choose the cheap textbook if I think that a more expensive textbook actually does a better job at helping me help students to learn the material.
On the other hand, my department just switched back to Stewart (boo) for calculus, because after all, Stewart does a competent job at everything, and has everything in there, and...no one ever got fired for choosing Stewart. (This was after we had a committee work to choose a new calculus book, which we did (Larson& Edwards) after a year or so of work and looking at all the calc books we could find, and then, after we'd adopted it for two years, the publisher brought out a new edition, so of course we needed to revisit the idea, and then the instructors who hadn't bothered to be involved in the process before said, oh, well, actually we don't like the book you all chose for reasons, and then there was a vote, and we didn't even actually compare anything else out there, it was either continue with Larson & Edwards or switch back to Stewart. So of course the vote was to switch back. Grrr.)
But that means that when I teach Calculus, I have to use Stewart, and I *can't* choose a lower-priced text for at least that class. (In particular, my students either should already have the textbook from their previous class, in Calc II or III, or they will be going on and will need the other textbook in their next class.)
posted by leahwrenn at 11:40 PM on January 21, 2016
(1) Use a crappy, free textbook.
--This does not serve the students' educational needs.
(2) Use an old edition of a good textbook.
--I've tried this, and it's problematic: the bookstore won't let you adopt an old edition, because they can't get it from the publisher, and if you just let students use any edition they can find, then when you assign exercises 2, 4, 9, and 27, the exercises will have changed from edition to edition (because of course they will, right), so then you have to type out the exercises or whatever, which is time I could be spending doing something more useful for them, and then it turns out that changing from edition to edition, they actually added a useful example...so it ends up being a huge hassle.
(3) Use the new edition
---it costs a lot, which is problematic.
(4) Use the new edition, but go with the publisher's option to use a cut-down edition or a loose-leaf edition or (ugh) the ebook version
--people complain that they can't resell the book, or (loose-leaf) it's not a good long-term book, or (ebook) not everyone has access to an ebook reader. And used copies are hard to get.
And I like to at least think that students might use their textbooks after the end of the semester. At least with calculus books, you often get three semesters out of your $250 book. (At the expense of breaking your back carrying around an 8 lb book in your backpack.)
There continues to be a lot of discussion about textbook prices---on a mailing list I'm on, someone was just asking about whether a free calculus book was any good. And it is something that thoughtful instructors do consider when choosing which book to adopt---but I'm not going to choose the cheap textbook if I think that a more expensive textbook actually does a better job at helping me help students to learn the material.
On the other hand, my department just switched back to Stewart (boo) for calculus, because after all, Stewart does a competent job at everything, and has everything in there, and...no one ever got fired for choosing Stewart. (This was after we had a committee work to choose a new calculus book, which we did (Larson& Edwards) after a year or so of work and looking at all the calc books we could find, and then, after we'd adopted it for two years, the publisher brought out a new edition, so of course we needed to revisit the idea, and then the instructors who hadn't bothered to be involved in the process before said, oh, well, actually we don't like the book you all chose for reasons, and then there was a vote, and we didn't even actually compare anything else out there, it was either continue with Larson & Edwards or switch back to Stewart. So of course the vote was to switch back. Grrr.)
But that means that when I teach Calculus, I have to use Stewart, and I *can't* choose a lower-priced text for at least that class. (In particular, my students either should already have the textbook from their previous class, in Calc II or III, or they will be going on and will need the other textbook in their next class.)
posted by leahwrenn at 11:40 PM on January 21, 2016
As a former reference publisher editorial nerd, I'm not sure whether to applaud or be horrified by platforms/services like Texidium, mooted as a solution to the academic textbook “problem”. Through Texidium, every student gets the ebooks of their courses, and gets the cost added to their tuition fees. The publishers get 50% of the book price, seemingly a better deal for them when new book buying supposedly hovers at 40% in the first year of publication, but vanishes to almost nothing after year three. No resale market. No samizdat. But no choice, and no real reference books to keep for your career, either.
posted by scruss at 5:50 AM on January 22, 2016
posted by scruss at 5:50 AM on January 22, 2016
One of my professors in a cognitive neuroscience class assigned a textbook, which cost $150, that she had written. On the first day of class she stood in front of the class and said "look, I know it comes off as kind of skeevy that I'm assigning a book I wrote, but I wrote it in the first place because no other undergrad textbook covered the material I wanted in the way I wanted, and that's still true. But I still feel bad. So, here's the deal. My cut of a sale of a single copy of this textbook is $5. If you decide to buy the book (instead of renting or otherwise 'aquiring' it), bring me the receipt and I will give you five bucks."
It's still one of the more mensch-ly things I can remember one of my professors doing. Good textbook, too.
posted by Itaxpica at 7:04 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's still one of the more mensch-ly things I can remember one of my professors doing. Good textbook, too.
posted by Itaxpica at 7:04 AM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's still one of the more mensch-ly things I can remember one of my professors doing. Good textbook, too.
Some authors actually choose to forego their royalty if they adopt their own book at their school. No idea how common it was, but I remember hearing about it happening from time to time.
posted by Kosh at 10:50 AM on January 22, 2016
Some authors actually choose to forego their royalty if they adopt their own book at their school. No idea how common it was, but I remember hearing about it happening from time to time.
posted by Kosh at 10:50 AM on January 22, 2016
Stillwell's Mathematics and Its History, 3rd ed.: still expensive no matter how.
Lately, I've been using addall.com as a book price comparator; it's much faster than bookfinder.com. And recently I bought my first international edition textbook (as which some programming books I'm interested in are released) 'cause it was substantially cheaper.
posted by Zed at 11:48 AM on January 22, 2016
Lately, I've been using addall.com as a book price comparator; it's much faster than bookfinder.com. And recently I bought my first international edition textbook (as which some programming books I'm interested in are released) 'cause it was substantially cheaper.
posted by Zed at 11:48 AM on January 22, 2016
I've gone back to school for my 2nd semester at a prominent public uni. Got most of my textbooks on Amazon Rentals for around $20 a semester. /justSayin
posted by daHIFI at 7:44 PM on February 3, 2016
posted by daHIFI at 7:44 PM on February 3, 2016
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