Digital Textbooks - The Latest Scam
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 by Kelly Sutton It's the first week back at LMU and everyone is running around trying to find the cheapest place to buy books before their professors start noticing. Four months abroad made me momentarily forget what book companies in the States are allowed to get away with. I present to you the latest scam I have discovered--which I am sure is not new to many schools: textbooks sold in tandem with an online "workbook." As always, it's difficult to tell who exactly is to blame: the publisher, the school, the department, or the professor.
I went to my German II class earlier this week and was informed I would need a book and a workbook. No problem, I thought. I ballparked the package around $80 online. You'll see I was pretty close.
Digital Textbook Extortion
Enter a lovely service called Quia Books. They offer online course workbooks. How environmentally conscious. They are trying to save paper. Except the cost of the workbook does not decrease. It's still $43.25 for a glorified PDF.
So, for the time being, let's think of high textbook prices as a "necessary evil" of the American education system. The biggest problem with Quia is that it locks me into their system. The only way I could get a key for the course, since their search functions are--what's this?--limited, was to get one from my professor. There's no ISBN search. And it's a surprise that she actually provided her "Quia Course Code" on the syllabus; she's of no obligation to do so. I imagine many professors don't even know what the hell this alphanumeric "Quia Course Code" is or what it does.
I'm lucky. I can buy my textbook on Half.com for $42.99 and the online workbook for a mere $43.25 for a grand total of:
$86.24
My ballpark was pretty close.
The Campus Bookstore to the Rescue!
But what if my professor hadn't given me the course code? Thanks be to the deities, because my campus bookstore will come to the rescue.
They offer the textbook and a code for the workbook for a mere
$176.88
That's a $90.64 difference for those of you without calculator watches.
So the semi-free market purchase of Half.com/Quia is $90.64 less than the school bookstore price. Quia has a fixed price and a product that is only available through them. The Half.com part is the online free market link in this mess. I realize you pay a premium for having the on-campus resource, but there's a point when the premium becomes absurd. Especially when the bookstore prevents you from copying down the ISBN numbers of your books for some price checking.
Here's the big point: If you were taking my class with a bundled online workbook and the professor didn't give you the course code, you would be forced to buy the book and workbook from the bookstore. No Half.com. No Amazon Associates. No AbeBooks.
And if you think you'll just open the book and see what the course code is on the inside of the book, think again. Most books with online workbooks are sealed to prevent theft of the workbook code (the thing that you redeem to get your PDF). Once unsealed, these books can't be returned.
The Problem and the Solution
There are two problems here:
- People can't decide what an online workbook is worth. It can only be obtained through one site for a fixed price. No free market in sight.
- In the case of a technologically-ignorant professor, the student will be forced to buy the book from the bookstore, being charged one inflated price and one fixed price. While it is possible to find the book through the Quia Books search, the search fields are limited and the prices--again--are fixed.
The solution is pretty simple: Stop doing this. This system preys upon the ignorance and tight schedules of professors and leaves the students to pick up the inflated cost.
Ask the Readers
Does your campus institute a similar system? Have you ever had a professor refuse to give you the course code? Let us know in some comments.
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Reader Comments (9)
Buying from abroad can be very usefull, where books are sold at much cheaper rates for cheap paperback versions of your shiny hardcover books.
http://www.bookfinder.com/ is an amazing site that I started using last semester, and continues to provide very competitive prices by searching many book sites across the world.
I've not ran into that here, but we certainly have our fairshare of craptacular text book shennanigans. Oddly enough, I wrote a http://www.mindfulink.com/2008/01/17/the-high-cost-of-learning/" rel="nofollow">post yesterday about this at my Uni (posted this morning) as I've going to be discussing it in the college advisory council I'm head of and trying to figure out some ways to solve this sort of issue somewhat.
It's generally the fault of everyone involved, I've found. In one case I just dealt with yesterday we had the professor wanting us to buy about 7 books. Now, he's always careful about finding cheap, excellent books. The uni bookstore, however, never manages to get them all in, or enough of them, or orders the wrong ones. But these are widely available books, most available at your local Barnes and Noble - but more to the point - AMAZON or HALF.COM!
And so these students bitch about this stuff for session after session instead of trotting to Amazon, getting them all for 40% less than they would have paid at the bookstore and getting free shipping!
Luckily, however, I've not came across this Quia system (yet!). The whole damn thing is such a raquet.
I just dropped about $400 on books yesterday, and I'm not done yet. I still need one more book.
One thing that peeved me this semester is the recent phenomenon of web-based homework systems. Our school uses Blackboard for course management tools. It sucks, but at least it doesn't cost any extra money.
I'm not totally savvy with Blackboard, but I know for a fact that an instructor has the option to upload quizzes, homework assignments, and exams within its interface. I guess nobody told two of my professors about those nifty features...
This semester, in addition to Blackboard, I have two separate accounts with two additional services (that I had to pay extra for) in order to do the required homework. http://coursecompass.com/" rel="nofollow">One service for my Organic Chemistry class, and a http://webassign.net/" rel="nofollow">separate one for my Physics class.
The first program -CourseCompass- is run by a major book publisher in partnership with Blackboard. Wonderful. Two crappy institutions combining forces to create a larger, crappier institution.
It is amazing how much people charge for pdf ebooks. Fortunately a lot of the information can be accessed for free on the web. In my university (in the UK) they used to photocopy chapters out of all the important books and sell them to us at cost price. It is a pain to pay all that money when a lot of the time you only need the book for a short while. I would see if a group of friends could share a copy or put notices up to see if any one from last years course wants to sell theirs.
Last semester, my history prof listed three books on the course syllabus -- 3. I'm not a history major. It was a required humanities course. I went to class the first day, checked out the required readings and bought one of the books (for about $115 from the campus bookstore). The other two I requested from my campus library, photocopied the required chapters, and returned them to the library. If I would have gone all out and bought all three books, I would have paid almost $200. For one course. That was not for my major.
At the end of the semester, I spoke with a classmate who attempted to resell the books back at the bookstore. The bookstore took one of them for $35.
Book prices are becoming outrageous. Thankfully one of my professors this semester explained things a bit better to us as to why he wanted us to purchase (or not purchase) his $110 book. The bookstore couldn't buy the old version, i.e. 8th edition, for an entire class; so it stocked the new, 9th version. This rocking professor, though, gave us the reading equivalents for the 8th edition book, in case some of us wanted to go on Amazon to purchase a used 8th ed. book for $10 instead. Let me just say, this professor is kick-ass.
I just found out about this lovely practice today. I have grants and loans for school and usually buy all my books at the campus bookstore because like a lot of others I dont have the cash on hand and charge it against my expected grants/loans. Well in comes this class that the campus bookstore isnt even showing a book for. I log in and am told to go to Quia and set up an account. I then find out I have to buy the book key to access the PDF book and activities required for the online class. This in itself is a pain because half my class is going to be on Quia and the other half on the webct blackboard. Now I have to pay 105 dollars for this jewel of which cant be charged against my expected grants/loans from school. No, no that would be too easy for struggling students to do. I now need a credit card which I dont own, following everyones advice!! Now I am waiting for my refund check from school so that I can afford to borrow someones credit card and purchase this damn book!!!! Thank God I graduate in December.
what?! they charge $43.25 for a pdf? that is ridiculous! yes the buying and selling of textbooks has already been somewhat shady since the dawn of time...especially when you're stuck between the editions!
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