Talk:Textbook

NPOV dispute

This article repeatedly accuses both students and professors of being completely uninformed about the textboox process, and why the price on these textbooks are so expensive. It seems to me that most students and expecially most professors are not nearly as moronic as this article makes them sound. It just seems like the article was written from a publisher's point of view.

This seems a bit sensational. Most textbooks are not $100, and many are available used. Perhaps this could be broken up to have a very informative NPOV section at the top talking about:

• what a textbook is
• how they are used in grade school, high school and college
• who generally writes them (type of people, leading publishing houses, etc.)
• the used textbook industry
• how they differ outside the U.S., etc.

Then there could be a section called "Controversy" that talked about the various controversial issues (price, content, revisionism, professors promoting their own books, etc.). The price discussion would be better if both POV were represented (sure, there's price gouging, but textbooks are expensive to produce, so it's understandable that it's hard to make the economics work). The content discussion would benefit from some case/law references. --Meara 03:23, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Just for what it's worth, in my experience (as a current college student) most of my textbooks do indeed cost $100 or more if purchased new. Quandaryus 21:10, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I got a new copy of MIT's calculus book on amazon for $50, I believe it was New, but I'm not sure (in any case, it looked new and didn't seem to have been used). ugen64 00:42, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

I agree the pricing discussion is inappropriate in its current location. It doesn't really deserve more than a footnote somewhere, or perhaps a note that high prices are a leading cause of pursuing other avenues of disemminating information from teacher to student.

Perhaps a better way to deal with the pricing topic is to find some neutral data on the subject and simply present what goes into the cost of the average textbook. (i.e. 30% printing costs, 60% copyright licensing, 5% bookstore profit, 5% other) This would be more informative than the current approach, and you could just have a section about "What goes into the cost of a textbook?" or something.

The problem is that the only source for this data is the book stores and publishers themselves. They publish numbers, but they're obviously nonsense, pretending that they make 0% profit and that the entire cost to the consumer is justified by expenses: http://www.nacs.org/public/industry.asp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.73.243 (talk) 21:06, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Writing a paper on textbook prices; it seems like this article doesn't flow at all. In the first paragraph it states "Many university students complain of unreasonably high textbook costs ... Since the 1980s, prices have risen much more rapidly than the rate of inflation[1], and many students feel that this represents price gouging on the part of the publisher" To be honest I had to read this section about three times before it clicked, it just appears contradictory. Also, worth mentioning that science books, and biology in particular, are the worst offenders for textbook pricing.

Below is the link to a Washington Post Article on textbook prices, in it a member of the National Assocaition of College Stores was quoted as saying that according to one of their recent studies that over 60% of US college students refuse to buy textbooks to help save money. Kind of scary.

[1]

Zidel333 16:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that this article desparately needs to be rewritten. With full respect to the author, it is hard to read through you contradicting points of view. grab a notebook or palm pilet and go do research at universities. Ask students what they think of textbooks prices and give some of their quotes. ask professors about students not using cd's and websites and tell us what they say. i am in an economy class, and it is a new cource. the school board refused to buy textbooks, and so my teacher printed off this article so we could write an essay about the economicsof textbook buying. it was nearly impossible to find a firm belief about textbook prices because of the contradicting ideoligys. like i said, complete overhaul is nessisary.Dizzyizzy 19:10, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE: school board bought books!!! 112 a book...

yes most books ARE over 100 dollars... :P Dizzyizzy

I started to edit this page into a non-bias format, but it is going to be a long process. This is like sorting through R. Kennedy assassination evidence.

There is a lot of information that is true, but presented falsely. They do only take 32% profit, but that is compared to the average return for any business of 2-20%.

I will come back to this when I get time and attempt to fix it.

134.39.114.194 22:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh one more thing, I deleted a link that was false. The NASC link about the "New Textbook Dollar" is false. Some one should contact NASC about this. I am currently passing a law through WA state legislation regarding book bundle consumer options and know for a fact that publishers do not spend any money to bookstore cost. Nor do the bookstores take nearly that much by any means if any money at all from text sales. Most bookstores make their money from state money for operations and the sales of additional items such as shirts and what not.

The average cost of a text book is $56 if you include the cost of supplemental materials. If you only count the actual texts themselves the average is $93. That is at a college level, the cost for K-12 is significantly higher. These do not include internet sales like half.com that sell you the Euro version of the book that is exactly the same only with a different code on it and a slightly less colorful cover.

Also, there are rarely actual authors of text books. Generally it is a team of indivduals who compile and rewrite data. This is not secret information, just go visit one of the publishing companies and ask to look around. They are not top-secret so you can do that. Some will even give you the tour.

I will get back to all this next chance I get.

134.39.114.194 23:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC) Bryan AJ Kennedy

Leave the link in, just make sure readers can deduce for themselves that it's propaganda. 71.167.73.243 (talk) 21:12, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I attempted to make the inernational book section more neutral, as it seemed to be a publishers POV trying to persuade students not to buy international editions. --144.92.242.229 14:14, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Advertising?

There seems to be a lot of ads in this article for various textbook exchange services. Should this be removed? Sifaka 23:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

yeah well I agree with you. can't see how these inline links are any different from publishing spam in the external links.

I happened to catch my roommate adding one of the booksellers. He was trying to do the right thing and contribute just like I'm trying to do the right thing and getting rid of this nonsense. Wikipedia has been overrun with .com's inserting "enyclopedic" entries on their companies, inserting their inlink and/or external links on entries or keywords that match their business in hopes of getting advertising by Wiki readers as well as boosting their search engine visibility. This is crap. Every Wikipedia entry talks about an item that someone somewhere sells. Should we include the top 1000 sellers for hammers on the hammer Wiki entry? Does this serve an enyclopedic purpose? What I suggest is that we delete this spam and put a Google link for "used textbooks" or "textbooks exchange" at the bottom of the page as an outbound link. This clears the entry of spam and lets the user get more information on specific companies if that's what's wanted. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.18.183.82 (talk • contribs) 03:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC).

Links to search engine results are to be avoided per Wikipedia's external links guidelines. --Muchness 03:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Even so, those templates in the beginning of the article look really, really ugly. Belard 03:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

This page is good example of why Wikipedia, while a fun site, will never be taken seriously as a research tool. The person who started this article obviously had an axe to grind WRT textbooks, and the fact that he started wikitexts further shows that this is the case. While an encyclopedia is meant to be more than a dictionary, it's also not meant to be an editorial page, and much of this article reads like one. I am not going to edit the article, but if I did, I'd lop off all the "controversy" discussion, and focus more on the history, usage, development, and future of textbooks. What is in here now is...pretty poor.

I agree, any information related to disputes or controversy should be a seperate article all together. The issues behind them are a substantial part of current American culture, but is still seperate from the books themselves and is more relevant to 'student' or 'publisher'.

Most Modern textbooks are useless

In my opinion most modern textbooks seem to be very POV. I have no experience of what these books are like in America because I live in Great Britain (for those not in the know, Britain is more than just London!) but most textbooks produced in the last 10 years soom to be anti-Patriotic (Patriotism is different in Britain, in America patriotism means agreeing with the government all the time, here it means loving your history and country, indeed most patriots here at the moment (me included) want the current Leaders out of office) anti-Empire, anti-Independant thought and most terribly of all..anti-Christian, if I ever have children they can use some of my Books on history and that (I wouldn't let them be exposed to this degrading rubbish)-User:Booksbooksbooks

Patriotism in America is not agreeing with your government all the time. In fact the majority of people who fall into such a catagory do not exist in America.

I have been study Political Science for two years and working in my political community for nearly five and I have yet to meet a single American who agrees with any government even half the time, let alone all the time. You are mistaken friend. We were anti-government when we wrote the constitution, we are anit-government today...

and that is American patriotism.

FOR THE PEOPLE

134.39.114.194 23:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Amen. My economics textbook was written by a single author, N. Gregory Mankiw. It has an extremeny biased POV, mostly in the author's favor. Having been an economic advisor to bush, he includes many articles about himself, and, frankly, it reminds me of chinese communistic newspaper propaganda.

In praise of Chairman N. Gregory Mankiw and the Party, Dizzyizzy 22:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Overly American bias

This article should be altered to encompass relevant comment about textbooks in countries OUTSIDE of the USA. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nutty timmy (talk • contribs) 17:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC). Agreed, but are you going to contribute?

I put the information relevant internationally on the top, and added a Swedish point of view. Thus, I assume other nationalities might contribute, adding details of their system. Therefore, I think the American-bias sign can be removed. You can put it back if you disagree. Mikael Häggström 06:19, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Textbook Publishing Industry

A college proffessor once told me that his manuscript was rejected because it was short on filler; he only wanted to include that which he thought was necessary for two semesters on English Composition, but he had said that (on his account, his narrative, lecture) the publishers said it needed to fit certain specifications of length to be sold; and he went on to say that such publishing companies are owned by or have stock market shares related to petroleum companies...Does any one know where I can find good literature either validating or invalidating such statements with regards to oil companies influencing American education or the manufacture of college textbooks?--Recoverypsychology 18:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Response: Not true. Most publishing companies are owned by international conglomerates, and are either publicly traded companies with no direct ties to oil companies or are owned by private equity funds. Oil companies have little to no influence on the manufacture of college textbooks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.122.161.14 (talk) 01:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

New Sub-Sections Added

Please comment on the new sections I added under Controversies, "Research" and "International Market Pricing". I would welcome any comments/suggestion on how well this material fits and best practices at WP for such articles. 66.102.205.160 (talk) 19:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Passing laws to prevent the sale of used books

According to this article http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1712 , high text book prices are due entirely to the used book market, and the author mentions this: "Unless and until laws are changed to prevent the organized sale of used books, you can expect textbook prices to keep increasing." Are there actually groups trying to outlaw the sale of used books? I can't find anything online. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.73.243 (talk) 21:38, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Consolidation

The article currently states, "A recent wave of consolidation reduced the number of major textbook companies to just three: Pearson, Cengage Learning and McGraw-Hill." Houghton Mifflin is the only omission from the list compared to the "major four" section earlier on the page. However Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt merged at the end of 2007 to become Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, an even bigger textbook publishing company than Houghton Mifflin had been priorly. Mattlistener (talk) 01:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Here's a clarification on the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Web site:

BOSTON — June 2, 2008 — Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company today announced the completion of the sale of the Houghton Mifflin College Division to Cengage Learning, formerly Thomson Learning... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.13.55.211 (talk) 05:36, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Author's POV

As one who has published a textbook (albeit with an extremely limited audience), I don't really think that anyone ends up fantastically wealthy, which is not to say that they don't make a living. I spent the biggest part of a year of my life writing and then editing that book. My return...12.5% of the Net, and I'm told that is a good first contract. I would be absolutely delighted to sell 5000 copies per year because of the limited market (the subject is emergency management). The book itself is $70/copy retail. If that happens, I will end up with $3000-4000, which I will then pay taxes on. The normal markup on textbooks at retail is about 20%, so the retailers aren't getting rich either, just making a living. The publisher will end up with about 2/3 of the purchase price, but for that, they have to solicit new acquisitions, have editors to hold the hands of new authors, have people to copyedit, to proofread, to produce covers and other artwork, to obtain permissions for illustrations and other materials used by the author. They then have to physically produce the book (in my case about $10.00/copy), warehouse it, market it, and ship it (I sent 6 copies to colleagues in Australia and the UK...shipping=$100, although admittedly cheaper in bulk). Then as part of the marketing process, they have to give away 'desk copies' to educators, for consideration of adopting the text in question. If enough of them do...you might do okay with sales...but the reality is, talking with other professors, they get 20 or more desk copies for every book that they actually order. All in, after everything is paid for, the publisher will probably make about $10/copy. That being said, within five years the knowledge of the field will probably have changed enough that the old edition will have to be discarded and replaced, and the whole process begins again. Publishers earn their living on volume, not price, and they actually publish certain texts repeatedly at a loss, in order to enhance their reputations. The textbooks that students DONT pay for...high school texts for example, are generally a much better earner for the publisher than college and specialty texts. Nobody gets rich from textbooks, so the suggestions of greed are not entirely appropriate, and most authors tend to be academics who are passionate about their subject, or are hoping to advance their academic careers through publication.

This creates an interesting situation. What you are REALLY arguing about here is the value of intellectual property. The creator of the property put a good deal of work into that property, and appears to be asking for a fair price, in most cases, in order to provide you with access to that information. If you want to take this argument into other areas...you routinely pay $15-20 for a music CD that costs the record company fifty cents to produce. You routinely pay a similar amount for a DVD of a popular film, the DVD costing under a dollar to produce. The point here is that it isn't the recording medium, but the content that is valuable...THAT is what you are paying for.

So then, like the band that is already making millions of dollars off their work, or the film producer who is doing the same, isn't a textbook author entitled to a fair return for a year or more of work put into a product that you will benefit from directly? The very fact that albums and films are pirated all the time, and that textbooks are not, should tell you something very important about textbooks. If there were enough of a profit margin to make it worthwhile, someone would be ripping that off too! In some senses, that is actually what the resale of used textbooks is about, and would be illegal if I had anything to say about it. If you don't want to buy the book...go to the library and borrow it. I find it remarkable that in our society, knowledge and intellectual property are ceasing to have any value to anyone. There is this sense of entitlement, as if people believe that they have a RIGHT to pirate intellectual property, and that the mere fact that something is expensive entitles them to both criticize the producer of said product, and to steal it, if they can. From the perspective of the student, you need to look at what has actually happened to the cost of your tuition over the past forty years (it hasn't gone up nearly as much as you think!), how much of it is subsidized by the rest of us (you don't pay the whole bill...believe me!!!), and what has happened to the cost of textbooks in the same period (less than doubled in forty years, and some titles have actually decreased in price!!!). Before anyone screams too much about how 'greedy' the textbook publishing industry is being, you need to examine the sense of entitlement that so many of you seem to be cultivating. Many people seem to have lost track of the fact that education and access to knowledge are privileges...NOT something that you are entitled to. Food for thought. Emrgmgmtca (talk) 12:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Emrgmgmtca, did you have specific suggestions to improve this article?WeisheitSuchen (talk) 14:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that everything up to my post in here was entirely POV. If you take a good look at the Talk page up to this point, or indeed to the article itself, there seems to be a great deal of bashing of 'greedy publishers' and suggestions as to how to bypass the system (because, after all, we are ALL getting rich!) such as reselling used textbooks. I was attempting to present another point of view, in an attempt to balance this discussion and the article. I was also trying to ensure that those arguing about how greedy we all were understood that intellectual property has value, and that this value should not be ignored simply because it was inconvenient. Still, if the intent is to let the rant go on unchallenged, who am I to argue?Emrgmgmtca (talk) 15:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you point out some specific places in the article that you feel don't meet NPOV? I'd be happy to work with you on making the article itself more neutral. Most of the discussion on this page isn't really appropriate, your post included. Talk pages should be used to discuss improvements to the article. WeisheitSuchen (talk) 16:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

We'll try it your way. I'm always happy to try to work together. I've just gone through the content of the article and removed all of the references that were dead links. There was so much reliance on one particular website (in some cases even when it wasn't directly identified in the reference} that I am challenged to understand whether the article is supposed to be about textbooks, or about that particular website and organization. I've also removed several that did not lead to the information that they were claiming to support. I've also removed three that deliberately (in my opinion) misquoted the references in the article content. I've added a whole list of 'fact', 'relevance', and related tags. I've presented a contrasting point of view in some cases (we'll see how long THOSE last). The great pity is that no tags exist for 'self serving', 'unbelievably biased', 'ignores facts', etc.. Whether or not my post was appropriate, it at least tried to explain why I was taking the positions that I was taking. It is sometimes a little frustrating to watch people spout off on their own personal agendae, and not being allowed to debate their positions. If this material was prepared by college students, we are in big trouble. Between writing style, complete bias and lack of balance, and flat out nonsense as references, I would have given any of my students an 'F' for this effort.Emrgmgmtca (talk) 17:52, 13 February 2009 (UTC)