The Publishing Horizon

Campaign against high textbook prices in America

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal (September 2006) a congressional advisory committee is looking into the issue of high textbook prices and what is to be done to bring them under control. This issue has been a major concern in America in recent years.

Back in October 2005, The New Yorker summed up the issue well.

College students now spend more than five billion dollars a year on textbooks, while states spend another four billion on books for elementary and high-school students. And the revenue is not being spread around: five publishers account for eighty per cent of new college-textbook sales in North America.

But dominance has its discontents, and textbook publishers are routinely denounced as price gougers. The average price of a book is around fifty dollars, and many, particularly in the sciences, will run you well over a hundred. A General Accounting Office report released this summer found that, since 1986, prices have risen at a pace of six per cent a year-double the rate of inflation. For critics, such numbers are proof that the publishers are manipulating the market. The dearth of competition in the business is an issue, but the fundamental cause of the price spiral is what economists call an agency problem: professors pick the textbooks, but students have to pay for them.

The G.A.O. report placed much of the blame for soaring prices on what it called "enhanced offerings," all the CDs and instructional supplements with which textbooks are increasingly bundled-or burdened. When price is no object, professors might as well choose the fanciest textbook around.

The Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign, a coalition of State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) and Student Government Associations in fourteen states has published two critical reports describing publishers' tactics to keep textbook prices high.

• Rip-off 101: How the Publishing Industry's Practices Needlessly Drive Up Textbook Costs - A National Survey of Textbook Prices(February 2005)
  
• Required Reading: A Look at the Worst Publishing Tactics at Work (October 2006), which describes what publishers do to keep prices high.
  
  • Increased Prices, Same Product
    
  • Costly Bundles
    
  • New Covers, Old Content, Zero Used Books
    
  • Modern Bundles: Resell Sabotage
    
  • “Low Cost” Options that are Anything But Low Cost
    
  • Customized to Limit the Used Book Market

Cambridge University Press not to publish in regional languages in India

"We are not entering into printing or publishing books in regional languages as of now," said Stephen R R Bourne, chief executive officer, Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press had tried publishing books in Spanish and in other languages but it did not work out for them because most people don't associate Cambridge with anything other than English, explained Bourne. "Therefore it makes more sense to focus on work in English," said Bourne.

according to a report in Rediff.com. Bourne also describes their dual-brand model for India which is to be extended to other countries too.

"We would be working under a dual-brand system where one global partner together with a national partner would tap every country individually," said Stephen R R Bourne, chief executive officer, Cambridge University Press.

Recently Cambridge University Press acquired 51 per cent equity stake in New Delhi-based Foundation Books Pvt Ltd and its divisions Foundation Media and Foundation e-Learning. Post acquisition, the entity has been renamed Cambridge University Press India Pvt Ltd.
Foundation Books registered a turnover of Rs 25 crore last year and managed to publish 120 titles in the last 2 years. They have 11 editors right now based in Hyderabad and Delhi, and is looking at recruiting both free-lancers and employees.

"We would be managing and controlling the operations of Foundation Books from this time on. But would let them retain their imprint," said Bourne. "We chose Foundation Books because we have been business partners for a long time now," said Chris Boughton, chairman, Cambridge University Press India Pvt Ltd.