Textbooks

Introduction

Although our study is not limited to textbooks, particularly when one considers how digital expressions of educational content have begun to blur the definition of a “textbook”, the prominence of this form of EM acts as an important gateway to understand the rest of the EM field. The price of and access to quality textbooks, particularly at the higher education level, has been a recent highly controversial issue. Notably, The Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) brought the issue to widespread attention with the publication of their report Rip-off 101: How the Current Practices of the Publishing Industry Drive up the Cost of College Textbooks (see #Summary of The Student PIRGs Findings below).

Subsequent government-funded studies and policy movements have created a proliferation of research on the textbook market that unites the ideological questions of access and regulation. Simultaneously, technological affordances have resulted in alternative models of EM production and delivery gaining ground in both the K-12 and higher education levels.

Textbooks in Higher Education

Production and Distribution Cycle

Lisa Shamchuk defines 15 basic steps in the production and distribution cycle of textbooks (Source: Shamchuk 2009, 9):

1. Author submits proposal to publisher.
2. Publisher conducts a market review.
3. A contract is established.
4. Editorial team + author develop manuscript.
5. Manuscript is reviewed.
6. Author approved revisions.
7. Cover is designed.
8. Supplemental materials is prepared.
9. Marketing strategy is developed.
10. Index is prepared.
11. Book is sent to the printer.
12. Book is promoted by sales representative.
13. Adoptions are secured.
14. Books are shipped to the bookseller.
15. Profits are distributed.

The GAO report summarizes the stages in the following picture (GAO 2005, 5):

Summary of The Student PIRGs Findings

The Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) have brought the issue of access to quality textbooks to widespread attention through their Make Textbooks Affordable campaign, inaugurated in 2004 when they published a research report entitled Rip-off 101: How the Current Practices of the Publishing Industry Drive up the Cost of College Textbooks.

As noted in trade magazines like Publishers Weekly (http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA500814.html), the PIRGs study criticizes the industry on the following points:

• Textbook prices are rising "at more than four times the inflation rate for all finished goods" (Rube 2005, 1);
• The most popular texts have new editions published every three years;
• New editions are priced 12% higher than the editions they are replacing, "almost twice the rate of inflation" (Rube 2005, 1);
• Bundled texts are on average 10% more expensive than unbundled counterparts;
• 55% of bundled textbooks are not available unbundled;
• The average textbook costs 20% more in the U.S. than U.K. and some are dramatically more expensive.

Quadrants Mapping

We have plotted our descriptive research of the major actors, market forces, and outputs of the Higher Education textbook market onto our Quadrants tool; our most recent mapping of actors with regard to representative types of commons is shown below. Even with crucial political-economy differences between the textbooks in K-12 and textbooks in Higher education, the final picture of these fields are very similar when regarding the strategies used by incumbents and challengers.

Price and Access Issue

Between 1986 and 2004, textbook prices rose 186 percent in the United States, or slightly more than six percent per year. (GAO 2005, 8)

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