Information about Textbook

A textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the demand of the educational institutions. Textbooks are usually published by one of the four major publishing companies. Although most textbooks are only published in printed format, some can now be viewed online.

History

Textbooks emerged as teaching instruments with Johann Gutenberg's printing press. Early textbooks were used by teachers, who used the books as instructional aids (e.g. alphabet books. Later books were printed for children, and have become the primary teaching instrument for most children since the 19th century.

Used textbook market

As with many media products, a market for used textbooks exists. The goal of such trade is to acquire textbooks for less money than the price of new copies or to sell unneeded books to recoup some or all of their purchase price.

Bookstores

The bookstore selling the textbooks often also buys them back after use, but for a lower price. Furthermore, there are many companies specialized on only buying and selling used textbooks.

Other students

Students also tend to sell textbooks amongst themselves. After completing a course, sellers will often seek out members of the next enrolling class, people who are likely to be interested in purchasing the required books. This may be done by posting flyers to advertise the sale of the books or simply soliciting individuals who are shopping in the college bookstore for the same titles. Many larger schools have independent websites set up for the purpose of facilitating such trade. These often operate much like digital classified ads, allowing students to list their items for sale and browse for those they wish to acquire.

International

Used textbooks are also sold on a national and even global scale through online merchant and auction websites which allow shoppers to search many major new and used book sellers at a time for specific titles. Such services can usually locate books based on their title, ISBN or UPC. Students must shop carefully to make sure they obtain accurate titles. Sometimes professors choose to bundle their textbooks, but not all components may be available online. Students also have access to purchasing annotated teacher's editions online, which if they use at school, may constitute cheating. International copies also pose a risk for shopping online, as some books are different from their national counterparts. Most stores are willing to share their intellectual property with the public (ISBN numbers and associated research).

United States

Main article: Education in the United States

K-12

In most K-12 public schools, a local school board votes on which textbooks to purchase from a selection of books that have been approved by the state Department of Education. Teachers receive the books to give to the students for each subject. Teachers are usually not required to use textbooks, however, and many prefer to use other materials instead. Textbook publishing in the U.S. is a business primarily aimed at large states, especially California and Texas. This is due to state purchasing controls over the books. When publishers succeed in making a sale to either or both states, they are guaranteed a large print run and therefore a profitable product. The Texas State Board of Education spends in excess of $600 million on its central purchasing of textbooks.

Because textbook publishing is a competitive business, when mistakes occur they are costly to remedy and when objections to either the inclusion or the exclusion of material are voiced, the publishers attempt to compromise in an effort to make the sale. As a result of this procedure errors have been known to crop up in textbooks covering almost every subject.

College and university

In U.S. institutions of higher education, textbooks are chosen by the professor teaching the course, or by the department as a whole. Students buy their own copies of their books.

Criticisms and controversies

High school

In recent years, high school textbooks of United States history have come under increasing criticism. Authors such as Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States), Gilbert Sewall (Textbook Publishing), and James W. Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me) make the claim that U.S. History textbooks contain mythical untruths and omissions, which paint a whitewashed picture that bears little resemblance to what most students learn in universities. Inaccurately retelling history, through textbooks or other literature, has been practiced in many societies, from ancient Rome to the Soviet Union. History textbooks are not subjected to review by professional academics, nor can authorship of a high school textbook be used to advance an academic toward tenure at a university. The content of history textbooks thus lies entirely outside the academic forum of fact and social science and is instead determined by the political forces of state adoption boards and ideological pressure groups.

Science textbooks have been the source of some debates and have come under scrutiny from several organizations. The presentation or inclusion of controversial scientific material has been debated in several court cases. Poorly designed textbooks are also one theory on declining grades in mathematics and science in the United States and organizations such as the AAAS have criticized the layout, presentation, and amount of material given in textbooks.

The Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County brought forward a debate about secular humanist values being presented in textbooks.

In his popular book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, the late physics Nobel Prize laureate Richard P. Feynman described his devastating experiences as he once sat in a commission that evaluated science textbooks. At some instances, there were nonsensical examples to illustrate physical phenomena; then a company sent — for reasons of timing — a textbook that contained blank pages, which even got good critiques. Feynman himself experienced veritable attempts of bribery.

College and university

Many university students complain of unreasonably high textbook costs. Since the 1980s, textbook prices have risen much more rapidly than the overall rate of inflation [1].

Publishing companies (and their sales reps) earn profits on the sale of new textbooks only. After a new title or a new edition of an already-existing title is issued and used books begin to circulate, the publishing company loses potential profit exponentially. Thereby, the titles tend to circulate on two and three year cycles. At the end of the cycle, a new edition will be issued, which will then boost sales again.

Publishers try to negate the used book market by spreading propaganda that suggests that used books drive up the cost of new textbooks. However, most economists will agree that a secondary market will actually keep prices in check, as opposed to inflating them. Therefore, a surge of internet supplements, e-books and other ways of encouraging new text sales only, are being implemented by the publishing houses; at the cost of the student.

According to the National Association of College Stores, typically 12% of the price of a book goes to the author's royalties, 23% goes to the store, 32% pays for the publisher's paper, printing, binding, and editorial costs, and another 32% is taken by the publisher for profit or to cover expenses such as marketing and administration.

Some publishers sell copies of their textbooks to foreign markets at a much lower cost. The rationale is that these sales are additional, unpredictable income and should not be a factor in the pricing of textbooks in America. A study by a Duke University student found that, as the Internet has become more prevalent and facilitated the reimportation of international editions, publishers have responded by raising the price of the international editions. [2]PDF (169 KiB)

Used textbook market

Most college bookstores allow students to sell their textbooks back to the store. This price is typically 50% of the original price if the book is going to be re-used at the same college. Some bookstores offer more than the 50%, and apply that pricing to books in new or used condition. The books that are not being re-used typically yield zero to thirty percent of the new price. These wholesale prices are set by national used textbook companies and are based upon an economic model which predicts national sales of the books and compares them to inventory levels. Different companies set different prices.

An example of a book being purchased for a national used book company follows. First, the student sells the book back (at their college bookstore) to a national used book company, who generally runs the buybacks at college bookstores, where they buy books on behalf of the college and also for their national company. Reps from the used book company send the books they purchase from students back to the main processing center, where the books are then sold to another college bookstore. Finally, that book is sold as used to a student at another college at a price that is typically 75% of the new book price. At each step a margin is applied to the book to enable the respective companies to continue to operate.

Textbook exchanges

In response to escalating textbook prices, limited competition, and to provide a more efficient system to connect buyers and sellers together, online textbook exchanges were developed. Most of today's sites handle buyer and seller payments, and usually deduct a small commission only after the sale is completed.

Lucrativeness

With the large number of schools, subjects and grades in the United States, textbook publishing is a lucrative market, especially if a publisher can have a series of books adopted by politicians in a large state such as California or Texas. The five largest textbook publishers in the United States are: Thomson Learning, Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin and Harcourt General (a division of Reed Elsevier).

Sweden

K-12

In grundskolan (basic school), the Swedish equivalent of K-12, textbooks are paid for by the school system.

University

However, for institutions of higher education, students pay for textbooks themselves, although higher education in Sweden is free of charge otherwise.

See also

• Kanawha County textbook controversy
• Wikibooks - A sister project to Wikipedia whose goal is to create textbooks.
• Casebook - A special type of textbook used in law schools in the United States.

References

• Slatalla, Michelle. "Knowledge Is Priceless but Textbooks Are Not" New York Times, Aug 30, 2007

External links

• The Muddle Machine - Confessions of a Textbook Editor
• Rip-off 101: Second Edition -- How the Publishing Industry's Practices Needlessly Drive Up Textbook Costs
• TSTC Publishing's Blog A blog devoted to the nuts & bolts aspects of college textbook (and related materials) publishing
• Measuring effectiveness of K-12 textbooks in the US