Text Books Have Become Unaffordable

[Zeno Swijtink]

On Aug 21, 2011, at 5:51 PM, Debbie O wrote:

My son is starting at the JC, can't believe how much the books are for the above classes, does anyone have a current issue of these from the JC that we can use? Hopefully they don't change text books every year.


Debbie


Here is a NYT article discussing this problem broadly. [I don't know how to copy this article with all the links in it intact. If you know how, please let me know.]

- Zeno

****

https://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011...dition/January 14, 2011, 1:10 pm


Finding Cheaper Textbooks: 2nd Edition

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
Updated | August 18th.

With the start of a new semester comes another giant textbook bill.

But instead of heading straight to the campus bookstore, where the books often have the highest price tags, students can now tap a long list of Web sites that aim to make comparative shopping easier. There are so many options, however, that the whole process can begin to feel like the semester’s first major research project.

So last fall, we surveyed the various ways to save money on textbooks. We highlighted the free offerings online and the emergence of e-books, and listed several sites that rent or sell used books, as well as Web sites that act as search engines and compare prices across several providers.

Since then, we’ve learned of several more options, in part through the informative nuggets left by more than 200 readers who chimed in with their own suggestions. So in this latest edition, we have highlighted some of those and have taken an even closer look at comparison Web sites that do much of the legwork for you.

Comparison sites:

When using the comparison sites or other marketplaces, be sure to ask yourselves the following questions, suggests Nicole Allen, the textbook advocate at the Student Public Interest Research Groups. Are the books in comparable condition? Are rentals for the same numbers of weeks? Do the results exclude special offers or coupon codes? Can I do better at an on-campus book swap or loan program? What about local stores or other online retailers?

BigWords.com. Punch in the name and/or author of the book, and it generates a list of the cheapest competing providers — retailers and renters both — with the book and shipping costs listed separately. “It considers new and used books, book rentals, e-books, international editions, as well as current promotions, coupons and shipping,” Jeff Sherwood, the site’s chief executive, said in an e-mail.

Place your cursor on “about this copy,” and a little box will pop up describing the condition of the book (if it’s used) and the name of the seller (if it’s an Amazon.com listing, for instance, it will show the name of the actual seller). You can also filter your search for only “new or used” and “new only” books, or eliminate third-party sellers. (BigWords said that some users felt there was a risk with relying on an individual to send out books in a timely matter.) If you have books to sell, you can also run a search that will list various offers for a book in good condition.

DealOz.com Despite this site’s busy home page, several readers mentioned DealOz, which scours more than 200 online bookstores. A search for “Art History” by Marilyn Stockstad, yielded a long list of options ranging from a $41.06 rental from CampusBookRentals to a used text for $88.98 from Half.com, to a $109.49 new book from Alibris. I liked the fact that results often included coupons in the total price.

AddAll.com and BookFinder.com A search for the same art history book on these two sites, suggested by readers, yielded similar results. AddAll.com has a no-frills feel, but all of the information you need — total cost, expected delivery — is listed. The site, which claims to search most major online booksellers, didn’t appear to include rentals. BookFinder.com, meanwhile, also generated a long list of options (including rentals), but prices were slightly higher than DealOz, which factored in coupon discounts.

SlugBooks.com This site is aimed at students attending the 440 universities currently in its system. After you select your state, college, department and course, the required books will populate a chart comparing the costs of new and used copies at your college bookstore; Amazon.com; Half.com; rentals at Chegg.com and BookRenter.com; any digital options through Coursesmart and Amazon Kindle; and local student exchange listings run through Facebook. (Be sure to look for coupons and special discounts on the left-hand side of the screen.) Certain books also provide a sneak peak at the first chapter, so you can begin reading before it arrives.

You can also conduct a broader search across about 20 providers through a search box on its home page. Once results show up, click on “Want More Options.”

GetchaBooks.com Like SlugBooks, this site — created by a senior majoring in computer science at Bard and two juniors at Tufts — is aimed at students attending specific colleges (in this case, a network of 1,274 colleges). After you locate your classes, the site tells you which books you need, and generates a comparison across Amazon, Amazon’s third-party sellers, Chegg, AbeBooks, Half.com and your college bookstore.”We consider our ’secret sauce’ to be our intelligent algorithm that calculates the best place or places to buy all of your books collectively, not each one individually,” Michael Walker, one of the site’s founders, said in an e-mail. “We take factors like savings on combined shipping into account to help students find the overall best deal for all of their books.”

A search for a macroeconomics text required by a professor at Babson College appeared to yield competitive results. Meanwhile, all students attending a university outside of the GetchaBooks network can search for their books by entering its ISBN number.

ValoreBooks.com, a large marketplace with options to buy, rent or sell books, said it had declared a “price war” on its rivals who also rent books. As part of its guarantee program, the company will match any rental prices found elsewhere within seven days of your transaction. In a press release, the company pointed to three examples where it undercut Chegg, a competing rental company. But when I performed a search, I found a cheaper rental at CampusBookRentals.com, so results may vary based on what you search for. ValoreBooks’ rentals offers free shipping both ways, and shipping on books you purchase starts at $3.95.

Neebo.com. This site — where you can buy used, new or rent — is run by a privately held book distributor that owns a network of 280 college bookstores. Like Slugbooks and Getchabooks, it’s preloaded with the participating college’s courses and required books, but any student can use the site. So I performed a search for a college on its list — a biology class at the State University of New York at Purchase, which required “Fetal Pig Coloring Book” (a lab manual). It was listed for $19.99, with free shipping (shipping is free if you can wait up to 14 days for delivery). But I was able to find new and used versions that were about $5 cheaper through DealOz. The site is currently offering 100,000 free rentals to students who “like” Neebo on Facebook.

More on e-textbooks. If you’re not sure you’ll be completely comfortable reading and highlighting an e-book, at least one provider is allowing you to try it free. Follett — a large textbook wholesaler that also runs the RentAText program through more than 900 universities — lets you download any of the 12,000 eligible e-books for seven days through its CafeScribe.com Web site. Once you purchase and download it to your computer or netbook (an iPad version will be available in February), it’s yours to keep and doesn’t expire like some other e-books, the company said.

Just keep in mind that you can print only 30 percent of the text. One commenter on the site, who bought a psychology book for $46, says, “Not worth the head and heartache of having to keep track of what you have and haven’t printed.”

International editions: Several readers said they’d had luck with international editions of books, so we asked Ms. Allen, the textbook expert, for the details. She says she’s seen discounts of up to 50 to 70 percent off the price of a new book, and international books can be pretty easily found through used booksellers online. Often times, it’s the same book, but it may say something like, “For use in India only.”

But in an effort to sabotage international sales, Ms. Allen said, some publishers have made small changes to the pagination or text to make it more difficult to use in the United States (as they might do with new editions of the same text here). “Students won’t always know what they are buying,” she said. “So it can be a gamble.”

What sort of experiences have you had with the sites mentioned here and in our previous post? Please share any new tips in the comment section below.

Updated the section on GetchaBooks and Slugbooks to reflect the larger network of schools they now support.

[Imagery]

Unfortunately, you haven't listed any textbooks or classes for us to check. I have some of my textbooks from computer science classes...

There's a group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/group.php?g...5826311&v=wall

No guarantees, but at least it's another resource.

[Zeno Swijtink]

College education is in transition because of the self-propelled learning made possible by easy access to both information and emotional support provided free or at low cost online. (K-12 less so because of the baby-sitting function that branch of education has for busy parents.)


Go to https://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwis...ducation/28592 for links.

New Site Brazenly Trades Pirated E-Textbooks
August 23, 2011, 5:13 pm
By Jeff Young
Textbook pirates have struck again. Nearly three years after publishers shut down a large Web site devoted to illegally trading e-textbooks, a copycat site has sprung up—with its leaders arguing that it is operating overseas in a way that will be more difficult to stop.

The new site, LibraryPirate, quietly started operating last year, but it began a public-relations blitz last week, sending letters to the editor to several news sites, including The Chronicle, in which it called on students to make digital scans of their printed textbooks and post them to the site for free online.

Such online trading violates copyright law, but some people have apparently been adding pirated versions of e-textbooks to the site’s directory. The site now boasts 1,700 textbooks, organized and searchable. Downloading the textbooks requires a peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent, and the LibraryPirate site hosts a step-by-step guide to using it.

Publishing officials say they heard about the site only after it was featured on a peer-to-peer file-sharing blog last week, and they are now are considering a response. “Steps will certainly be taken,” said Edward McCoyd, director of digital policy for the Association of American Publishers. “I’m sure publishers will seek to do something about this site.”

The founder of LibraryPirate, who refused to give his name out of fear that legal action could be taken against him, said in an interview Monday that he hopes that a groundswell of textbook piracy will force publishers to bring down the prices of e-textbooks, which he sees as unfairly high. “I want to bring about permanent changes to the textbook industry,” he said. “The exorbitant price of a textbook shouldn’t hinder students’ ability to do well in a class,” he added. “I believe there is a moral objective at play here.”

But Mr. McCoyd counters that the site’s action unfairly “penalizes the people who are producing the materials.” He said the LibraryPirate site exaggerates the cost of electronic textbooks, which he says are often 60 percent off the price of printed options. He pointed to a fact sheet on a Web site run by the publishing association, called Cost Effective Solutions for Student Success. It argues that the average student spends more each year on movie tickets than he does on textbooks.

The founder of LibraryPirate said he based his site on the popular site Textbook Torrents, which was shut down after legal threats from publishers. He said he is operating his site in Ukraine, where, he said, it does not violate copyright laws, and he said he keeps a backup running and plans to open it in another country if the original site gets shut down. The site makes some money on advertising, but its founder says he spends more on servers and a staff of two people than he makes in ad revenue.

Mr. McCoyd argues that the site is an example of why new legislation is needed to help protect publishers. Specifically, he said his group supports what is known as the Protect IP Act (S 968), which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and awaits consideration of the full Senate.

Meanwhile, other Web sites trading e-textbooks have sprung up as well, and Mr. McCoyd said the amount of textbook piracy “continues to increase.” Just as publishers get one pirated textbook file removed, another version pops up elsewhere. “It’s still a game of Whac-a-Mole,” he said.

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[Dixon]

Generally I'm against such copyright infringement, but what with the exorbitant prices of textbooks, with the publishers taking advantage of a "captive audience" (students who must have the book for a class), I find myself cheering for the pirates.

[geomancer]

Generally I'm against such copyright infringement, but what with the exorbitant prices of textbooks, with the publishers taking advantage of a "captive audience" (students who must have the book for a class), I find myself cheering for the pirates.

A standard scam is frequent minor revisions so that texts become out of date.

["Mad" Miles]

When I was getting my credential at SSU, I always bought used. And for the expensive ones I would just read the library reserve copy. In a big survey class I can see how that would be problem, but the two times I did it, it wasn't particularly inconvenient.

Then there was the scam some of my buddies ran at the Campus Bookstore at UCI back in the day. Concerns about encouraging criminality prevent me from going into the details. Even though the statute of limitations has long since expired, I also have a reputation to maintain! Such as it is...

[battindown]

Having gone to a college that did not approve of text books, preferring the use of original or prymary source material. It does help to develop a critical mind. My daughter, however, attended a Waldorf school for 14 years (they don't use textbooks) which was fine when there was a good teacher of the subject. When the teacher was less adiquate, there was nothing to fall back upon for explanations. Still in general, I have expereienced text books as a tool for uniformity (one size fits all and all sizes are small) and do not afford intelectual discovery.

Generally I'm against such copyright infringement, but what with the exorbitant prices of textbooks, with the publishers taking advantage of a "captive audience" (students who must have the book for a class), I find myself cheering for the pirates.