The legislature of the state of Minnesota is considering a bill authored by Wiger, Pappas, Michel, and Robling with the intent of influencing textbook prices. They appear to believe:
- textbook companies publish new books with minimal changes to encourage unnecessary adoption of more costly material
- textbook companies bundle extra products that increase costs
- postsecondary institutions can encourage a vibrant used book market.
As I understand the basic economics, extending the use of books through resale will either
- drive up the cost of the original sale further so that publishing companies and the authors they support can achieve a profit on the one time they receive compensation for their product, or
- reduce the number of competitors until a smaller number of companies can sell more copies of whatever books are still available.
Attempting to mandate the business practices of publishing companies is really unnecessary and misrepresents the scope of the issues that are involved. Extending the number of times a given book is recirculated is really dependent on the behavior of instructors. There is no requirement that instructors must adopt the current edition of a book. There are companies that collect and resell used books for years after new editions are available. Check on Barnes and Noble online for a given textbook and see if other editions are available. Every bookstore knows how to gain access to these books and this is the reason they attempt to impose earlier adoption deadlines on instructors – they want to see how many used books are available before they buy any new copies. Actually, the bookstores contribute little in this process and receive what typically amounts to a 50% markup for buying a book from a student and placing it back on the shelf. Pretty easy money when you only do this when the instructor signs the order to stock the book again. Evidently the legislators associated with this bill ignore this particular source of price inflation. Why not completely bypass bookstores and order used books online?
It is difficult to take such simplistic notions seriously and I always wonder whether legislators don’t understand or purposefully simplify complex issues to play to the stereotypes of the voters who elect them.
BTW – I am personally offended by the high price of coffee. With the exception of McDonalds, most coffee shops I frequent now charge in excess of $2.25 for a large cup of coffee. Perhaps the legislature could look into the cost of coffee.
