High Textbook Prices In US Force Pupils To Buy Cheap Indian Editions Online
Textbooks in the US are priced so high that even used versions can give students a sharp pain in the wallet. The seventh edition of Francis A Carey’s Organic Chemistry—a standard text for pre-med students—costs $213 new and somewhere around $150 used. Add to that the companion study guide ($113 new; $90 used) and a student would pay between $326 and $240 for just one class. With four to five classes a semester—many assigning multiple textbooks—the costs multiply.
The same edition of Organic Chemistry, however, is available on a Canadian website called Abe-Books.com for $12, Time magazine said. The book is an international edition, printed in English but sold in India, and identical to its pricey American counterpart except for its soft cover. With a click of the mouse, a cash-strapped student could save hundreds of dollars.
According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, US textbook prices rose 186% between 1986 and 2004, or twice the rate of inflation. College students now spend roughly $900 on textbooks every academic year, books they are required by their professors to purchase. This disconnect between the buyer and the seller allows publishing companies to inflate prices for textbook editions evem on subjects that haven’t changed. “Of course you’d update the computer science textbooks every year, but do you really need a brand new edition of a calculus book?” asks Luke Swarthout, a higher education advocate at the US Public Interest Research Group.
International textbooks are printed—regularly in India, although sometimes in other Asian nations—under copyright agreements with Western publishers that allow the books to be sold for a discounted price. “The reasoning is that people in other countries can’t afford the higher prices,” said Swarthout, “so this is a way to provide them with the same quality of education as we get in America.”
But just as the internet has enabled illegal access to music and movies, so too has it opened the international book market—especially to the hands of college students, Time said. International textbooks are available on major bookselling websites including Amazon and eBay. It’s legal for students to buy them for personal use, but illegal for anyone to resell them outside of their intended country. “It’s a copyright infringement not for the person buying but for the person selling,” says Jane Ginsburg, a professor at Columbia Law School.
Individual sellers that use eBay or AbeBooks are breaking the law, says Ginsburg, but whether the sites are also liable for the auctions is unclear. Ebay recently won a court case absolving it of responsibility for policing its auctions for counterfeit items but international textbooks are not technically counterfeit. Like eBay, AbeBooks acts as a third party for sellers—generally stores in foreign countries. One copy of Organic Chemistry found on its site was being sold by a bookstore in New Delhi.
Last year, Stephanie Rodgers, then a senior at Vanderbilt University, bought a brand new, international edition of a physics textbook for $75 on eBay instead of the $298 US version for sale in the university’s bookstore. The only difference between the two was the fact that the US textbook was divided into three separate volumes, while the international version came as one book. Rodgers also purchased a $68 mathematical logic textbook ($130 new), which was nearly identical to her classmates’ version except that it was paperback instead of hardcover. “Which is fine, because I prefer paperback,” says Rodgers. AGENCIES
The same edition of Organic Chemistry, however, is available on a Canadian website called Abe-Books.com for $12, Time magazine said. The book is an international edition, printed in English but sold in India, and identical to its pricey American counterpart except for its soft cover. With a click of the mouse, a cash-strapped student could save hundreds of dollars.
According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, US textbook prices rose 186% between 1986 and 2004, or twice the rate of inflation. College students now spend roughly $900 on textbooks every academic year, books they are required by their professors to purchase. This disconnect between the buyer and the seller allows publishing companies to inflate prices for textbook editions evem on subjects that haven’t changed. “Of course you’d update the computer science textbooks every year, but do you really need a brand new edition of a calculus book?” asks Luke Swarthout, a higher education advocate at the US Public Interest Research Group.
International textbooks are printed—regularly in India, although sometimes in other Asian nations—under copyright agreements with Western publishers that allow the books to be sold for a discounted price. “The reasoning is that people in other countries can’t afford the higher prices,” said Swarthout, “so this is a way to provide them with the same quality of education as we get in America.”
But just as the internet has enabled illegal access to music and movies, so too has it opened the international book market—especially to the hands of college students, Time said. International textbooks are available on major bookselling websites including Amazon and eBay. It’s legal for students to buy them for personal use, but illegal for anyone to resell them outside of their intended country. “It’s a copyright infringement not for the person buying but for the person selling,” says Jane Ginsburg, a professor at Columbia Law School.
Individual sellers that use eBay or AbeBooks are breaking the law, says Ginsburg, but whether the sites are also liable for the auctions is unclear. Ebay recently won a court case absolving it of responsibility for policing its auctions for counterfeit items but international textbooks are not technically counterfeit. Like eBay, AbeBooks acts as a third party for sellers—generally stores in foreign countries. One copy of Organic Chemistry found on its site was being sold by a bookstore in New Delhi.
Last year, Stephanie Rodgers, then a senior at Vanderbilt University, bought a brand new, international edition of a physics textbook for $75 on eBay instead of the $298 US version for sale in the university’s bookstore. The only difference between the two was the fact that the US textbook was divided into three separate volumes, while the international version came as one book. Rodgers also purchased a $68 mathematical logic textbook ($130 new), which was nearly identical to her classmates’ version except that it was paperback instead of hardcover. “Which is fine, because I prefer paperback,” says Rodgers. AGENCIES
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