FYI

Rick Uttich

http://employees.oneonta.edu/uttichrm/

October 31, 2006

Textbook Publishers' Tactics Raise Costs for Students, Report Says

College-textbook publishers use at least six types of “gimmicks” to jack up the prices of their products and undermine the market in used textbooks, costing a student hundreds of dollars a year, according to a report issued today by the Student Public Interest Research Groups, an advocacy organization. The report, “Required Reading: A Look at the Worst Publishing Tactics at Work,” says the publishers’ techniques include bundling their books with costly but needless workbooks and CD-ROM’s, releasing updated editions that provide little essential material that’s genuinely new, and offering customized books that are useless outside the classroom of the professor who assigned them.