Textbook in the United States

Textbooks are editions of books specifically intended for the use of students who are enrolled in a course of study or preparing for an examination on a subject or in an academic discipline, as distinct from the trade edition of the same title, sometimes published in conjunction with a workbook, lab manual, and/or teacher’s manual. Textbooks also refers to the standard work used for a specific course of study, whether published in special edition or not. Textbooks were among the first works to be published following the invention of printing from movable type.

Textbooks are usually ordered by college bookstores in quantity, based on projected course enrollment. The standard publisher’s discount on textbook orders is 20 percent. Used copies in good condition may be sold back to the bookstore for resale at a lower price than new copies. Academic libraries generally do not purchase textbooks because for most subjects they quickly become outdated, but a textbook received as a gift, usually from a faculty member, may be added to the collection if the need exists.

According to the National Association of College Stores, the textbook market (including course packs) was a $10.25 billion industry in FY 2009-2010. Library and Book Trade Almanac (2010) reports that the average price of an academic textbook (all subjects) was $92.86 in 2008, an increase of 5.5 percent over the previous year. It is reported that tuition increases and the relentless rise in textbook prices threaten to make higher education unaffordable for students from low- to moderate-income families. The increases have sparked student resistance and forced college and university administrators, state legislatures, and even the U.S. Congress to address the issue. Various solutions have been suggested, including tax breaks, book rentals, and institutional licensing.

Textbook are not the same as textbooks edition, which are trade books issued in a separate edition specifically for the use of students enrolled in a course of study. The format may be altered to make it more useful, for example, by the addition of study questions and bibliographies at the end of each section or chapter.

Textbook Prices: Legal Iniciatives

The fact that textbooks now cost approximately $1,000 annually is a tremendous financial
burden for many students and their families. At the same time, escalating educational costs (tuition and textbooks) have a negative impact on federal and state government spending as financial aid providers. As a result, both federal and state governments have taken action aiming to contain soaring textbook prices and to improve affordability. The proposed solutions to lower student textbook costs include a variety of federal and state government policies and programs, including advocacy and legislative pressure on textbook publishers requiring transparent pricing, unbundling of supplemental material, and less frequent textbook revising. In prior to legislative activities, some states conduced background studies, including Minnesota and six SREB states (Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia). See The Minnesota Office of Higher Education (2007). Strategies for Reducing Students’ Textbook Costs. St. Paul, MN, available at ohe.state.mn.us/pdf/textbookCostsReport.pdf; Jeffrey Grove (2009). “Focus on Rising College Textbook Prices.” Southern Regional Education Board, Atlanta, GA, available at publications.sreb.org/2009/09S04_Focus_textbook_prices.pdf.

A significant first step was taken in November 2007 by presenting to the House of
Representatives a bipartisan bill, College Opportunity and Affordability Act, a part of which is
“designed to rein in skyrocketing book prices.”(For more information on new laws, see Kim Clark,“Four Reasons Textbook Costs Will Drop,” U.S. News & World Report, July 21, 2008, available at usnews.com/articles/education/2008/07/21/four-reasons-textbookcosts-will-drop.html?s_cid=related-links:TOP) This bill requires “publishers to provide more pricing
information to professors.” In addition, this proposal requires “publishers to ‘unbundle’ the
increasingly common and expensive packages of textbooks, CD-ROMs, workbooks, and Web tools” so students are able to purchase whatever part they need without being required to buy the parts they don’t need. This bill was passed by the House in February 2008 as Higher Education Opportunity Act, H.R. 4137 [110th], and became Public Law 110-315 after Senate’s approval in July 2008 followed by the Presidential signature in August 2008. The relevant section concerning textbook costs is Section 112 of HR 4137 (Higher Education Opportunity Act). For a
Congressional Research Service summary of the bill, see Appendix B and available at
govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-4137&tab=summary.

The effectiveness of Public Law 110-315 will not be known until sometime after the federal law takes effect in 2010.

More recent legislative activities include the newly proposed bill H.R. 1464: Learning
Opportunity with Creation of Open Source Textbooks (Low Cost) Act of 2009. This bill was
presented to the House of Representatives on March 12, 2009, requiring federal agencies to
collaborate in the development of freely-available open source educational materials in college-level physics, chemistry, and math, and for other fields. In particular, the bill requires each federal agency that expends more than $10 million in a fiscal year on scientific education and outreach to use at least 2 percent of such funds for collaboration on the development and implementation of open source materials as an educational outreach effort. It also directs such agencies, under the joint guidance of the Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Secretary of Energy (DOE), to collaborate with each other or with any federally supported laboratory or university-based research program to develop, implement, and establish procedures for checking the veracity, accuracy, and educational effectiveness of open source materials.

Much more recently, Senate Richard Durbin [D-IL] introduced S. 1714: Open College
Textbook Act of 2009 in September 2009. According to Senate Durbin, “(T)he Open College
Textbook Act will create a grant program for the creation of freely-available, online open college
textbooks.” It is expected that making high-quality open textbooks freely available to the general public would significantly lower college textbook costs. Durbin further notes that “this investment will improve learning in our college classrooms and help bring down the cost of college for students.”

More importantly, requiring textbooks funded under the program to also use an open license, which the bill defines as “an irrevocable intellectual property license that grants the public the right to access, customize, and distribute a copyrighted material.” Wiley (2009) considers the Durbin Bill as an important step for the open education movement as “it will bring a real sense of urgency of impact into the discourse, and provide the OER community with good data and metrics to talk with confidence about the amount of money students are saving thanks to open textbooks.” (David Wiley, “Durbin Open Textbook Bill Finally Introduced!” David Wiley’s blog, Iterating toward Openness, September 30, 2009. Available at opencontent.org/blog/archives/1103).

In addition to federal legislative activities trying to ease the strain on college students’ wallets
caused by textbook prices, various states including California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland,
Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington have taken similar actions. Many states have already proposed and passed similar bills that require changes in order to contain rising costs of college textbooks and to allow students easier access to affordable alternatives. For discussion about state actions, see Bell and Badolato (2008), Kingsbury (2008), and Clark (2008).

In 2007 alone, more than 85 bills in 27 states dealt with textbook affordability. By the end of 2007, 10 states had enacted 15 laws or resolutions to reduce textbook costs. (…)(T)hese legislative efforts take a variety of approaches.

Some legislation requires bookstores and publishers to offer both bundled and unbundled
course materials, publishers to provide summaries of changes in updated text editions, and faculty to consider cheaper options or submit their course material lists by a deadline so students have the opportunity to shop around for the best price (Bell and Badolato 2008). Other legislation exempts textbook purchases from sales tax; requires publishers to provide faculty with a complete list of all different text versions and supplemental material or a printed summary of substantive content differences in new editions; requires bookstores to spell out how new text editions differ from previous editions; actively promotes rental and buy-back programs; and encourages using technology to create and distribute textbooks and instructional materials in more affordable ways, such as electronic textbooks (e-textbooks cost approximately 50 percent of the retail price of a new hard copy textbook) (Ibid.).

In January 2009, the California State Senate introduced a new bill SB 48: College Textbooks
and Electronic Versions which would express the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation relating to the affordability of college textbooks and the promotion and use of online textbooks. The bill was amended in March and August 2009 and it would require that “publishers of textbooks offered for sale at a public postsecondary institution of education make the textbooks available in an electronic format by January 1, 2020.” The bill would also require that “electronic versions of textbooks include the same content as the printed versions and would allow the electronic versions to be copy-protected. The bill would prohibit charging a higher amount for an electronic version than is charged for the printed version.”

Although the year of 2020 seems still a long way off and it may not be always the
case that e-textbooks are less expensive than print printed versions, it is likely that the transition to etextbooks may occur rapidly and the overwhelming majority of textbooks will be available electronically long before this California State bill goes into effect.

While all these endeavors have been under way from coast to coast, the state of Michigan has
been somewhat behind in enacting textbook bills. Michigan has failed to enact laws or resolutions to reduce textbook costs, although attempts were made in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2006. In those years, Michigan legislators proposed bills to eliminate the sales tax on textbooks required for courses at postsecondary institutions (Michigan House Bill 5568, January 2006). Also, a different bill was introduced in order to provide an income tax credit for the full cost of college textbooks, credit available only after the taxpayer or taxpayer’s dependents pass the courses for which the books were bought (Michigan House Bill 6356, August 2006). The report of the California State University Textbook Affordability Taskforce (2007) lists all 50 states’ legislative activities concerning textbook affordability for 2005, 2006, and 2007.

In addition to tax-exempt or tax-credit proposals, in 2005 the Michigan legislature presented a resolution, first urging state school faculty to coordinate textbook selection to pressure publishers to make books more affordable, and also urging state institutions to explore group textbook purchasing (Michigan Senate Resolution 24, April 2005).

Unfortunately, since the state’s struggling economy and unbalanced budget made politicians reluctant to support tax credits or exemptions, none of these bills or resolutions has been approved in Michigan as of this writing, although legislators in many other states have been at the forefront of legal solutions for curbing the rising costs of college textbooks.

Source: The Investigation into the Rising Cost of Textbooks, Scholarly Publishing Office
University of Michigan Library, April 2009 (Updated January 2010)