Research Topics

So this week we're establishing where our group is in the research process. While I'm sure many groups are still working on finding their topic, our group, consisting of myself, Amanda, Tiffany and Molly, immediately agreed on our topic: The Real Cost of College Textbooks. It's a subject that affects all of us, everyone in the class, and let's face it, anyone who has ever attended college. Now, if you're a trust fund baby, this may not apply, but for most of us, coming up with the money to pay tuition, housing, and dining charges is difficult enough. I only have to worry about tuition and fees, I pay for my own apartment and food. Thousands upon thousands of dollars are poured out of pocket or borrowed in loans to pay for our education, only to be faced with seemingly ridiculous book prices.

Like me, I'm sure many students go right for the used books, so we can get the same content for a lesser price. We choose not to pay for aesthetic appearance, but content and savings.  New books can range anywhere from $50 for a light paperback to well over $200 for a new hardcover. Some classes require more than one book. This semester for example, if I had bought all my books new, I would have spent over $500. Instead, I spent an estimated ten to twelve hours scouring various sites on the web and bookstores for the best price. Ultimately I ended up getting my books from three different locations, renting two and outright buying the other three used. Even with all my hard work, I still had to spend over $200.

One of the subtopics we want to touch in our project is the fact that so many books are going electronic, or at least have an electronic version. In a green world, it is a great idea to help reduce the amount of paper and processing that has to be done to print books. But one would think that with the reduced cost of printing, processing, binding, shipping, and even repeated resale (cutting out the middle man) the cost of the text would decrease significantly. I mean after all, the only thing that has to be done once the book is organized and put together is to copy the file and deliver it to the purchaser. The path to consumer is much shorter, and the production cost is much less, so why are the e-books approximately the same price? There are even e-books now that students can purchase for the length of the semester or academic year that expire after a certain time. So why is the cost of these e-books still so high? Where is the money going? One would think that when the cost of production goes down, so would the cost, a way of encouraging the easier sale. Is the money lining the pockets of the publisher, the author, or both? These are the questions we look to answer in our project.