Advocacy Articles

Bundling and Customization...Is there value?
By Mark Palmore, Institutional Store Advocate and Executive Director

Textbook bundling and customization is a growing issue in our industry! Connect2One wants to do everything we can to help stores educate their faculty about this ever emerging issue. A few years ago, publishing companies began the practice of shrink-wrapping value added items with their textbooks which is now commonly called bundling. With bundling, publishers are able to create a product that in most cases students can not sell back at bookstore buyback. Therefore, students pay more on the front end and get less at buyback. Both bundling and customization increase the cost for students and negatively impact the bookstores bottom line.

Do the publishers care about the bookstores? They say they do, weve all heard it a million times, but these type of merchandising practices do not back up that claim. Do publishers care about the students? Yes, they want them to buy their product, but students continue to complain about the growing practice of bundling and customization. Do publishers care about faculty? Yes, they are the decision makers on which textbooks will be adopted. Therefore, the best way to address this issue is to educate your faculty on the impact customization and bundling have on their students. Lets look at some recent examples:

• At Johnson County Community College in suburban Kansas City (JCC), a custom textbook was sold that cost $65. Students were required to buy the custom book, which contained a half-page notice that it was a custom edition for JCC. Just weeks earlier the bookstore, thinking that the customization was something unique, did not buy back the very same book from students ending the summer term. As a result, students selling their summer term book received nothing, instead of approximately $30 at buy-back, and the students for the fall term had to buy new editions of the book because a supply of used books was not available. The net cost to the student for this single page of information was $35.
• At Penn State University, a new edition of Miller Economics Today cost $78. The only difference from last years edition is that the book now comes in a three-ring binder and includes copies of newspaper articles. As a result of this new edition, last term students received nothing for their used textbook at buy-back, instead of the approximately $40 they would have received could the book have been re-used. Last fall, since there were no used textbooks available, students paid $78 for new instead of $58 for a used edition of the book.

Students are buying fewer textbooks. According to the Student Monitor, in 1999 students paid an average of $303 for their fall textbooks and just three years later they paid an average of $329. That may not seem like a huge increase until you realize that the total number of books students purchased in 1999 was 6.7 and last fall it was only 5.7. That is a significant drop because students can no longer afford to pay for items they do not need or use without the opportunity to buy more affordable used textbooks.

Does the faculty care? Yes, in fact they care deeply about their students. They just need to be educated about this issue. Faculty are increasingly more concerned about the cost of books, and when they are educated on the total cost to students they are much more likely to adopt a textbook where at least some used titles will be available. When educated to this practice they have recently rejected bundles and customization as unnecessary.

Publishers have a great opportunity here to build long term relationships with the students by making the packages available to stores as separate items. The items will sell if the students see the value!

We will show you how national opposition is beginning to grow and a grassroots reaction to this issue is beginning to build. For example:

• U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) has conducted a study that reveals that the average New York freshman or sophomore is forced to pay $922 for textbooks, and he is urging the U.S. Department of Education to work with book publishers and schools to find ways to lower book costs for students.
• The New York Times has reported that textbooks, on average, are 50 percent less expensive in Europe, thereby leading students to order their books overseas.
• CalPIRG (California Public Interest Research Group) has recently launched a campaign in conjunction with bookstores in the University of California system to change publisher practices with regards to unnecessarily producing new editions.
• A legislative panel in Tennessee is investigating why college textbooks selling for up to $200 per book are not able to be re-used and re-sold after their first year of use.
• The California assembly is considering a bill that asks publishers to unbundle packages, disclose textbook costs to professors, and limit the changes to new editions.

If you are concerned about this issue in your store, what can you do? You can begin by educating faculty on the issue and by expressing concern to publishers. Connect2One is preparing materials to help support bookstore managers in this effort to educate stakeholders on the issues surrounding the cost of college textbooks. For more information, contact me at mpalmore@connect2one.com or call me at 800-563-9034.