We Rent Movies, So Why Not College Textbooks? | Hacker News Reader

We Rent Movies, So Why Not College Textbooks?

nytimes.com

31 pointsrobg36 comments

"The textbook business was wildly inefficient"

My understanding is that the textbook business is designed to be inefficient (from a student's perspective - and very profitable from a publisher's perspective).

The short lifespan and planned obsolescence of textbooks would make textbook rental a very difficult business without participation from publishers and colleges.

Nevertheless, this could be a tremendously useful service for college students so I wish them the best.

"My understanding is that the textbook business is designed to be inefficient (from a student's perspective - and very profitable from a publisher's perspective)."

I think this varies quite a bit according to the field of study and the level of coverage of the topic.

To take one example: introductory calculus (which most undergraduates are required to take) textbooks can get away with this because students have little choice. They have to take the course, and so they have to get the book, and so the publisher essentially has a free hand, abetted by the academic bookstores which do quite well off the churn of new books.

But this isn't universally applicable. My degree's in philosophy, for example; I still have all the books, and nearly all of them are still in print in the same edition. Most of those have been in their current editions at least as long as I've been alive (fun data point: the teaching guide for one course -- not the text, the teaching guide -- has been in the same edition since the 1970s). The only things which change frequently are topical anthologies, which do need to be updated more often to track recent developments.

And anecdotally, I suspect that's a bit more common once you move out of the math/science area of most schools; the number of standard texts which simply aren't amenable to constant churn seems to decrease rapidly as you move over into the liberal arts.

This already exists - it is called the reference section of the library. I have never purchased a single calculus textbook or one of those huge $150 dollar physics textbooks.

Instead, I can just go sit at the engineering library for my two hours and answer the problem set.

As far as studying goes, you can usually find most information you need for class online that comes from a reputable source. Just make sure to double check that you didn't miss anything by reading over the chapter the next time you take out the book.

The problem happens when everyone does this and there aren't any copies in the library. I ended up just buying key textbooks because neither my college or department libraries sufficed.

The only time I have ever seen this happen is days leading up to the exam. Which, if you take good notes, shouldn't make a difference because you'll be able to just study from you notes. Plus your notes are usually a much more efficient study material than a textbook anyway.

Maybe your university is small, i have a lot of classes with about 150 students. There are always not enough textbooks for that number of people. I find hard to believe a library is going to purchase more than 50 copies of one book title.

Which is why they are on reserve. Essentially reserve only allows you to have a textbook for 2 hours and there are usually conditions which do not allow you to reserve it more than x times per week etc.

If there are 3 reserve texts for a 150 person class where likely 80% of the people in the class own the book/are not aware of the reference section, you can assume that you will be able to get a book reserved for a few hours at your leisure (or at least get on the waitlist).

Neither my college or department library had a reserve system.

The department wouldn't let you take key textbooks out of the library, but you could easily squirrel one away in a corner and work for days uninterrupted.

Textbooks are usually placed on reserve, which has a 2 hour time limit. You take the book, get the work you done you need to do, and return it right there. There should be a waiting list as well, so you can time your workload appropriately. With a little advanced planning, you should be able to work the system.

The college I go to disallows checking out textbooks. If I want to check out a textbook I have to go to my community college.

Some years back, someone posted official-looking signs around the Stanford campus containing a "confession" from the bookstore admitting that it had been gouging students for years and offering them refunds.

The bookstore had to hustle to get out its own signs telling students that this was prank and that no refunds would be issued.

I normally don't condone pranks but this one was pretty clever and it did send them reeling for a few days anyway.

Anyway, it is probably students' pent-up frustration in feeling trapped by this system that is the real "secret sauce" behind the success of this service. Lots of demand. All that was missing was an elegant solution.

How come schools don't provide the textbooks themselves? It worked in high school. I mean think about it:

a) they can buy in bulk and get a huge discount.

b) they only need to buy 1 set every 2-3 years. Saving money

c) they can decide when to update their edition.

And to pay for this, add a "Textbook surcharge" to each class pricing. This way the cost can be split between 6-8 students. So a regular $129 book, would be sold to university at $80, so each student would pay only $10 for the book.

Hell they can probably even make more money by donating the books to some 3rd world schools.

I mean, I can honestly say that I have not opened a SINGLE book since graduation. With Google there is absolutely no reason for students to keep books after the class is over.

If you're smart you can break even, if not profit by buying textbooks used online, and then selling them again. I made a $300 profit last year on textbooks.

I bought them cheap online, and then sold them to other students less than the price of the campus bookstore, online again, or if the price was right, back to the campus bookstore.

What are you going to do with 50 copies of the 3rd edition when the 4th edition comes out?

1. New editions are not churned out every six months. 2. In most cases you can get away with not having the latest edition for a class . Schools don't change the syllabus just because a new edition of a text book has just rolled out.

Based on my experience in school you're right about the first point (though they are still churned out very frequently) but incorrect about the second point (at least at the school I go to- I suspect it varies from school to school). Professors frequently require the latest edition of a book. Sometimes you can use the old book, but oftentimes it makes it very difficult to do the homework as the chapter/problem numbers get scrambled around in every edition and new problems can be added in the new editions.

Market for a diffbook?

That's actually a pretty good idea. The difference between the newest edition and second newest edition of a book can be up to $100 sometimes. For example the my intro circuits book cost me $100 used (http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Circuits-8th-James-Nilsson/dp...) for the newest edition when I could have gotten the second newest one for $5 (http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Circuits-7th-James-Nilsson/dp...)

How much new information is in the 8th edition that justifies the price difference, do you think?

I can't really say since I don't have the 7th edition. In general though, they usually add another chapter or two to incorporate recent developments in the field. These are usually interesting but almost never actually used in class. The only reason for the price difference (in used copies at least) is that all classes require the new one now, so there is no demand for the old one.

Forgive my ignorance, not having been to a US college - what happens if you just buy the old edition and (say) copy the pages from the new one in the library, or make some handwritten notes? I'm assuming they don't do a loyalty check on the contents of your book bag when you attend class. Do the book problems vary from edition to edition, limiting your ability to do assignments, for example?

Don't mean to be snarky but I get the impression that the relationship between US textbook publishers and academia is really the worst of all worlds, and seems like a case of the free market gone wrong, with few colleges working to offer a competitive (ie cheaper) option to students who don't want to pay ridiculous prices for books.

Mind you, it's great for autodidacts like me who can pick up slightly older textbooks for less than the cost of printing. Now if only Spivak would do a new edition of his calculus book...

No, new editions are churned out every 12 months or so; of course it depends on the course. I remember my strategic management book was in its 14th edition, and its first editions was only in the 90s.

And the section numbers, case studies and questions get shuffled around too, so the previous edition is not sufficient.

The market is inefficient because the folks who choose which books to buy - the people who set the course - are not the people who have to pony up the costs. So it's in the interest of the publishers to maximize their gouging of students, and then spending a good fraction of the surplus on "incentives" for course setters to keep them on board and recommending the latest edition. The publisher who gouges the most has the most money to spend capturing these interests, creating a feedback loop, so for any given course vertical, there's a tendency to a monopoly.

Some schools are fighting back against this. For example, I know that the UCLA math department has a policy that professors are required to search for a replacement textbook once a textbook goes beyond the third edition, unless there is a significant addition of material (e.g. entirely new chapters needed as a result of recent developments). The idea being: "If the author hasn't got it by the third edition, they'll never get it."

I believe this eliminated the majority of calculus/linear algebra/diff-eq texts from introductory courses, so it has become easier to find used copies.

It's a valid question in applied sciences, where techniques change rapidly - though perhaps more at the graduate level. In many other fields, not so much. Call me naive, but I think college should emphasize fundamentals rather than what's hot, and the fundamentals don't change that rapidly.

Anyway, to answer your question, sell them. I buy computer books that are an edition or two out of date because I'd rather pay $10 than $60+, and I can catch up up on the new stuff relatively easily. This works most of the time.

Cheap trick: get textbooks from amazon.co.uk - same edition, paperback, less than half the price. They don't jack the prices of the Euro editions to anything like the same extent that they do here.

In Germany there used to be multiple copies of textbooks available at the university library. At least at the university I studied at. Since then the universities might have changed a lot, as they started adapting anglo-american structures (BA and MA studies).

I studied in London for a while and overall I enjoyed university life there more. But the libraries were really bad compared to the German ones. In Germany they would also frequently respond to my wishes and buy specific books, and they would order books from other libraries for free. And they did so even when I wasn't a student anymore.

The system that exists amounts to rent anyhow. One use and then it's landfill. The problem isn't renting, it's the price.

From what I've seen, the prices on Chegg are a little more than what you'd end up spending if you bought all the books used that you could, and then re-sold them at the end of the semester. I'm seriously considering using Chegg next semester, however, for the convenience of not having to check various used book stores for the best prices, and more importantly, of not having to go around re-selling you books at the end of the semester (plus, the guaranteeing of saving that money, where sometimes you can't even resell a book because it won't be in use the next semester at all. This happened to me when I used a custom "Penn State" edition of my Economics book. Penn State upgraded to the new edition, and no bookstores wanted it because, of course, no other schools used the "Penn State" edition.)

The state schools in Wisconsin have a rental system. It worked great. I didn't have to purchase a single text book. Some classes had several text books, which the book store would only rent the first or second primary book, but this wasn't too common.

I do know that the publishers didn't like the university doing this much. Also, it hindered the professors a little bit because they were pressured to keep their textbooks to a minimum and to keep the same text book for as long as possible, even if there was a good justification to switch. So, the text books had a reputation for not being the best things available for us students.

One other thing just occurred to me: the books from the courses I really enjoyed I wanted to keep. If the books are mostly for resale, maybe the subject is not important enough?

If they wanted to lower textbook costs, they would not reorganize the chapters and re-release the books every 2 years.

There is plenty of secret sauce to Chegg’s business, including logistics and software to determine the pricing and sourcing of books, as well as how many times a given book can be rented.

Doesn't really sound all that defensible to me...

I've used Chegg and I have to say they are going to be a winner/already are. Quick summary:

-Fast Shipping -Great Prices -GREAT service -Easy to use app

I file them under the "if I had money" I'd invest in them.

We do rent most textbooks. Buy a book for x, use it for the semester, sell it back for y (y <= x), and the rental cost per day is (x-y)/numDays. This doesn't work for the new editions problem of course.

Why is a "textbook" different than a regular book at all? What can you learn from it that you can't learn from of K&R, plus "Programming Pearls", and other books aimed at the target market?

In India, college students usually get books from their seniors (who give them out for free, after the results).

There is the small problem of postage costs. Compare a movie in a sleeve to a huge book.

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