Spotlight On Composition Teachers
Joseph Patrick Squance
A Textbook Comparison Between Two Cultures
During my undergraduate years at Ohio University, I had a friend in the Civil Engineering program. The textbooks for that program, being somewhat thicker than, say, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in paperback, were exorbitantly expensive, which was a strain on his budget. So rather than give up beer or guitar strings or food, he found a way to get all his books for free by taking advantage of the book store’s unfortunate physical layout and established return policy. He’d buy his books at their regular retail price, take them home, return to the store later with his empty bag and receipt, find all the same books on the shelves, and “return” them for a full refund. It was as ingenious and simple as it was dishonest, and I couldn’t help but respect him for sticking it to the man so effortlessly.
These days, and probably not too long after those days too, the bookstores have rearranged their interiors to keep this from happening. But students, as a culture, have continued to find new ways, and use new technologies, to get the books they need at the lowest cost possible. Used books are usually the first place they start, but those books are in short supply and tend to sell quickly, which leaves only the new books – crisp, stiff, unmarked, and expensive as hell.
Some students in this culture blame the professors for choosing the most expensive learning tool they could find. Others blame the bookstores, which generally mark their products up by as much as 40%. But most blame the publishers themselves, accusing them of purposefully and malevolently fleecing a helpless market of consumers who have no choice but to buy their product. Having been a student, I understand where this ire comes from. I was a student of English back then, so my books tended to be relatively cheap, but handing over all that money (all $100 of it?) still felt like lopping off a pound of flesh. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for a Chemistry major, or a Marketing major, or a Business major to buy a four-foot stack of hardback textbooks.
On the other hand, I also spent three and a half years working for an academic publisher of college-level textbooks, which gave me a good perspective on why these books are so expensive and why it’s difficult to keep prices low. Having observed from both sides, it’s been fascinating to see the contrast in how two cultures (the student, or consumer, culture; and the business, or producer, culture) view this shared artifact. What’s most interesting is that the attitudes of these two cultures, and the fact that neither fully understands nor sympathizes with the other, is destined to keep the nature of their somewhat symbiotic relationship antagonistic.
Although both groups spend an great amount of time with textbooks, the student viewpoint and the business viewpoint are starkly different. To the publishing company, the textbook is a product that they’ve developed and are selling to a consumer in a particular market. However, the student culture tends to resist the role of traditional consumer and refuses to participate completely in the process. First of all, the student knows she will not keep the book indefinitely, but will sell it back when her course is through, so the transaction is only temporary. Also, a textbook, as a product, is similar to a prescription drug in that the consumer is only buying it because someone else told them they had to. Students are not buying the textbook on the merits of its quality, but because the professor made them. And finally, a textbook, as an element of education, transcends being a simple object that a student pays money for and takes home. It is an extension of the other supplies they have bought (paper, folders, binders, pens, etc.) that are designed to facilitate learning. They are not buying a toaster, they are participating in their education.
Meanwhile, the publishers insist on fitting this segment of customers into a business model in which they don’t quite fit. Their books are designed, like any other product, to bring in revenue--to recoup the loss of the initial investment and then crank out profits. But what they don’t seem to be taking into account is that, even though they continue to price their books very high, their target consumer has traditionally been somewhat strapped for cash. This creates a situation where a product becomes a financial burden on the person who buys it, and also fosters a perception of cold-hearted insensitivity. In the past, students had few options for dealing with high book prices--they bought the used version if they could find it, or maybe tracked down a copy in the library, or even “shared” the book with a classmate--none of which made much of an impact on the bottom line.
To say, though, that textbooks are priced artificially high would be inaccurate. Presently, textbooks are incredibly expensive to produce, and this is ultimately reflected in how much students have to spend. Cost, therefore, is an issue for both cultures. N. Gregory Mankiw, for example, a Harvard economist and the current Economic Adviser to President Bush, is rumored to have received a million dollar advance for his first book “Principles of Economics.” That was the amount spent before a single word had been written, so you can see how easily the costs can mount. Competition within the marketplace, too, continues to drive prices up as each publisher strives to outdo the other with more technology, more advanced teacher supplements, more web-based features, more, more, more… In essence, the business culture functions independently of its own consumer base.
The mismatch is puzzling, given that students need textbooks to learn and publishers need students to stay in business. And while the textbook itself continues to slowly evolve and become a sharper, more effective educational tool, it’s rising steadily to the point where no student will be able to afford more than one per semester. In the meantime, students will continue to buy books and publishing companies will continue to make them, and the cultural issues that separate them will remain unresolved.