Throwing the book at us

As if the rising cost of tuition wasn’t enough, IU students have to deal with similarly skyrocketing textbook prices. Textbook prices increase at four times the rate of inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index, and in a State Public Interest Research Group study of the University of California system, the average college student spent nearly $900 on textbooks over two semesters. That’s a whole lot of pizza – or scholarships.\nThe economic system of textbook pricing will always screw the students, since a third party (the professor) selects the books for the consumers (students), who foot the bill. No matter how many used editions the bookstore has to buy back, the publishers will still print the unnecessary new editions and bundled packages of workbooks to raise the price.\nSo, what can we do about it, other than continue to close our eyes and shell out the cash?\nFor one thing, we can streamline the used book system by using rental sites like TextbookFlix.com, a play on the well-known DVD-rental site Netflix. By renting books rather than buying, we can avoid that painful moment when we resell them to T.I.S. for 5 percent of what we paid. Alas, we’re still concerned the price of renting books is no less than the price of buying them from a bookstore.\nIn addition to Amazon.com and eBay, other textbook-specific sites such as Campus Book Swap allow students to buy and sell books directly from other students, cutting out the college bookstore middleman.\nThere are always other ways to cut costs. Students can share textbooks with their classmates or simply exchange books with friends in other courses. Some of us, of course, have found the ultimate solution: avoid purchasing any textbooks. This, however, has some unwanted side effects on one’s GPA. The unfortunate result of high cost leads many students to dangerously forgo buying and reading textbooks at all.\nA real long-term solution, proposed in a New York Times op-ed piece by Michael Granof of the University of Texas, suggests treating textbooks more like software than other print books. Much like Microsoft Office on an IU computer, a software book will only be used collectively, and the person using it will only have it for a limited time. \nWhile this would undermine the booming used book market, the market would be obsolete if universities footed the bill on the license. If the university then wanted to pass the bill to students, it would be much lower than the price for a hard copy, eliminating the cost of printing and distribution.\nThis solution may be possible in the long run, but in the here and now, we can still find ways to get books for cheap. All the savvy tricks of used book hunting, such as finding international editions or out-of-print editions that still contain all relevant information, can help us save money now.\nStill, as long as the system continues to allow professors to choose books disregarding price, publishers will continue to rip us off with outrageous prices.