[HAPS-L] Textbook prices

[Ken Saladin <ksaladin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm catching up with a backlog on this topic.



Apparently some urban legend (true or otherwise) was being spread around the BUBBA LEGISLATOR LIST SERV sugegsting that some professors at big schools, where there might be section sizes of 600-900 students, were being paid cash (in the several hundreds to thousands of dollars) so that a particular text would then be assigned to a large number of students in a big U system.


I had never heard of cash payoffs to individual professors until now. The most dubious incentives I've personally seen, and this was quite a long time ago (1980s), was a publisher offering the department teaching equipment such as a video disc player in exchange for an adoption. (See the blue sidebar in Ricki Lewis's article, http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/11281/.) All I've known publishers to give individual faculty (not counting fees for reviewing) were trivial lagniappes like mugs, T shirts, and mouse pads, and those were not in exchange for or contingent on adopting a book.



In our world, what happened was if a professor stands to materially gain in any way from the particular assignment of a textbook, he has to get a supervisor's approval (cut them in on the moola, too).


I think there's a good argument for asking profs to submit a justification for assigning their own books. It could get awfully dicey, though, for department heads or other administrators to tell the teaching faculty what is or isn't a suitable textbook for a course.

I think it's also reasonable to require faculty authors to forfeit royalties earned on their own campuses from their adoption decisions. It's important to demonstrate minimal conflict of interest to the students (although even without financial incentive, there probably can never be zero conflict of interest in having one's own book used on campus). Like Bob, I donate royalties from my own on-campus sales to the college foundation for scholarships and lab equipment--actually significantly more than the royalties I earn from this campus. Two-thirds of the microscopes I teach with in A&P are ones I purchased in this way. I include a note in my A&P syllabus, in the section concerning the required textbooks, that all royalties for on-campus sales are given to the college foundation. But this isn't a universal practice. The most questionable case I know is a professor who teaches one of our core curriculum U.S. history courses, and requires students to purchase a book he wrote on
the history of the York Barbell Company and the "manly culture" of competitive weight-lifting.

That Chronicle story that Dayton pointed us to is indeed interesting and alarming. I used to earn from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for reviewing other people's textbooks, but there was never the slightest hint that I was expected to adopt the book in exchange for the honorarium. There are some over statements in the article, though:
"Mr. Hahnel has written his share of reviews. He says he has been paid 'two, three, four hundred dollars' to review textbooks over the years. But he doesn't kid himself that the publishers were interested in his insights. 'I think publishers take it and put it immediately into the circular file,' the economics professor says. 'We know it's really just a come-on to get us to adopt the book.'"

Mr. Hahnel has it wrong. At least in my experience, these reviews are not thrown in the circular file.  I receive them all, as far as I know. They come to me in fat 3-ring binders or in stacks sometimes several inches thick. I keep them sorted by chapter, and infallibly read them all when I am revising said chapter. They're a major driving force in my writing of each new edition. They don't go into "File 13" until I'm at least at the galley (page proof) stage of the new edition. I hope no one in HAPS who's contracted to review an A&P book thinks this is just a ruse to seed adoptions, or that their reviews are simply discarded without being carefully considered by the authors.

More to the point is Ricki Lewis's comment in the Scientist article: "Textbook content is continually molded by professors who write reviews, for $25 to $100 per chapter."

Bob Tallitsch wrote:



When was the last time any of us bothered to contact a publishing company when we received a text in the mail for a course we don't teach, 


If an unsolicited desk copy arrives with a prepaid return label (rare), then like Alice, I will return it. If the publisher has an easily located e-mail address, I will send an e-mail to let them know I do not teach a course for which the book would be appropriate, and asking if they'd like it returned. I rarely get replies, but when I do, more often than not they say no, and I will just keep the book for reference or give it away later to a student. Publishers might be able to cut costs some by routinely enclosing a prepaid return label and a note regarding the principle of helping to control textbook prices by returning unwanted copies and not selling them to book buyers.

Sheri Boyce asked:


But...does anyone else consistently receive comp copies of books that you didn't request?  I've lost track of the number of texts, some for classes that I never have or will teach, that arrive unrequested in my mailbox.  In the last 6 months, I even received TWO copies of the same A&P text.  If publishers bemoan that they find it difficult to make money, why are they sending me books that I haven't asked for and won't use?  In cases like this, I don't feel so uneasy about turning around and selling the book and putting the $$ in my kids' college funds.  Any thoughts out there?


It seems to me publishers are not sending out as many unsolicited books now as they did in the '70s and '80s. I still get a few, but probably no more than 2 or 3 a year. But mistakes like Sheri describes will happen. I still don't think that creates a good justification for selling the book to a book buyer, though.



One way of ethically dispensing of texts (such as the unsolicited desk copies) is to donate them to such organizations as Books for Africa 
http://www.booksforafrica.org/  They work with local groups like Rotary that will pick up the books, so you needn't worry about shipping costs.


Nice idea, Harold. 



I give my extras to libraries (got permission to do so from the publisher).


I've tried that and found that libraries in my area (both university and community) have little interest in college textbooks. 



By the way, I'm looking at new editions during our break and have been checking out the changes you have made. Nice book.


Thank you Sandy.



I know this is not the way most spend their spring break but I don't have time otherwise.


I'm spending my spring "break" reading a master's thesis, working on income taxes, and revising a book. There's no real break -- just a different "to do" list.


Ken