Monday, April 14, 2014

HOW DO WE GET THAT EXPENSIVE TEXTBOOK?


HOW DO WE GET THAT EXPENSIVE TEXTBOOK?
by Jackie, Shijia, Van, Yixuan
            Life is never easy for a college student, isn’t it?
            When approaching the time for thorough packing at the end of the semester, we will find the most troublesome stuff is BOOK. Staring at these textbooks, do you recall the scene of hesitating in Odyssey? After careful comparison with copies online, we still walked away because of the ridiculously un-affordable price.
            Why are textbooks so expensive? Even though it does not cost hugely to enter the publishing industry and the U.S. has antitrust laws, a relatively small number of powerful publishers are still perceived to have monopoly power over textbook pricing. When our professors decide the materials for their courses, they will place orders at prospective bookstores, in our case the Odyssey. Odyssey will then contact publishers to notify them what books to order. Once the deal is set, the retailer like the Odyssey has the right to increase the price of each copy a little bit for its own profits. Unfortunately, if our professors happen to choose books whose copyrights owned by certain publishers, then it is quite usual for us to spend over $200 for the latest edition of a hard cover, colored, used textbooks. Sadly, since publishers only make money when new books are sold, they also buy up the old books and force the used book market to raise price, which makes used books less appealing to students.
            In this case, some of us tend to seek for digital forms of textbooks instead. This option generally costs less and is suitable for students’ tiny budgets. Not surprisingly, as we can see, Amazon dominates vast marketplace of e-book retailing and provides with only kindle edition to limit the use of resources. Compared to physical books, e-books are more accessible. You can read e-books on multiple devices such as PCs in the library, your MacBook, or even the smartphones that you carry everywhere. However, e-books also bring about inconvenience that keeps majority readers from using, such as difficulty in looking up specific part of the book, distraction from redundant features like embedded quizzes and electronic flashcards. You will find another disadvantage of e-books when you read through this blog.
            Luckily, we can go to our beloved library and borrow a hard copy of textbook for free. From the economics we learned, we know that each decision has an opportunity cost. Most textbooks are on reserve and each student can only borrow one at a time for three hours. We need to well plan this limited time period and use the book to the fullest. Don’t be too optimistic! You are risking not getting the book and re-plan your time, because someone might have already checked it out! Well, “If only I had bought my own book!”
            After the semester is done, you are offered several ways to sell back your books. Odyssey only buys back books that have been ordered from professors for the new semester at no more than half of the original price. You can try bigger marketplace like Amazon.com, Half.ebay.com, Textbookrush.com, where you will find a pool of potential buyers. Compared to Odyssey, in the latter option, you will see listed prices of different sellers and then set your own price. It sounds like perfect competitive market where you have perfect information, competitors perceive same prices as you do, and it is easy to enter and exit. Faced with this elastic demand, however, you may realize that the older edition that you possess, the less likely you are able to sell it back. Besides, you wouldn’t be able to sell if it is an e-book! Rationally speaking, you want to adjust your preference for purchasing textbook next time by thinking of how will you be better off. As a supplier, your cost is the original price you paid, the depreciation of the book, the transaction fee charged by Amazon, and the shipping fee you paid. You need to balance the original price you pay for and the chance of getting potential return.
            In a nutshell, we are facing unaffordable prices for textbooks. Many of students still prefer using physical books. We cannot change the fact that we need books to do homework, which contributes to a fairly inelastic demand for textbooks. Thus, we do wish that the textbooks could be less expensive. We hope there would be more open source. However, it seems that the price adjustment won’t come soon, so why don’t we think about it in a more optimistic way: The cost we pay for books will gradually pay off and become our very own intangible asset, something called “Knowledge”.


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