Savvy marketing has helped increase sales of textbooks, perpetuating the rise in the price. Faculty and students alike feel these rising costs as they purchase new books each semester.
John Ray, the Winston-Salem State campus bookstore manager, said that the cost of textbooks depends on several factors.
At a recent class forum designed to answer students’ questions about textbooks, Ray said that they are typically authored by teachers from hundreds of universities across America, and that books are becoming more graphics oriented, which adds to the books’ printing costs and ultimately to the book prices.
The campus bookstore at WSSU, where Ray has been manager for seven years, is operated by a company called eFollet, which has a 25 percent profit margin on the textbooks it sells.
Ray said that the bookstore isn’t entirely to blame for the high price of textbooks, either.
“We are told what to carry, whatever the teachers choose,” he said.
In fact, teachers’ desire to keep up with new editions of textbooks seems to be the crux of the problem.
“Administration has encouraged the sale of books,” said a faculty member of WSSU, who asked to remain anonymous. “If we make a book optional for a class, students won’t buy it.”
The need for books remains ambiguous for some.
Students such as Brittney Clinton, an education major at WSSU, feel that books are unnecessary.
“Half of the instructors don’t even use the book,” she said.
Others feel that the price of textbooks should be included in the tuition and fees of the university. Marquita Gulley, an education major at WSSU, said that the prices have become “outrageous.” “As much as we pay for tuition, books should be included,” she said.
Pressure on the faculty to adopt current editions of textbooks has fueled demand, therefore keeping prices high. The average price of a new textbook now is around $70.
Laine Goldman, a mass communications professor, is a proponent of lowering the prices of textbooks.
“I think if teachers start looking at this realistically-they’ll say I can use this book another?[semester].”
In recent weeks, Goldman has spent her time encouraging teachers to use textbooks for more than one semester, which ultimately keeps down the cost of books.
If a teacher picks a book to be used for the next semester, students who currently own the book will receive one-half the purchase price back when the campus bookstore buys back used books.
April 1 was the deadline for teachers to make a decision about using a book next semester.
If, for some reason, teachers didn’t make a decision by the first of April, students will not receive “The Half Back Guarantee.”
Selling books back to the campus bookstore means there are more copies of lower-costing used books. Colleges in North Carolina are bound by law to provide at least 25 percent used books. The campus bookstore currently has around 38 percent used books in stock.