Textbook
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A textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the demand of the educational institutions. Textbooks are usually published by one of the four major publishing companies. Although most textbooks are only published in printed format, some can now be viewed online.
Textbooks emerged as teaching instruments with Johann Gutenberg's printing press. Early textbooks were used by teachers, who used the books as instructional aids. Later books were printed for children, and have become the primary teaching instrument for most children since the 19th century.
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[edit] United States
[edit] K-12
In most K-12 public schools, a local school board votes on which textbooks to purchase from a selection of books that have been approved by the state Department of Education. Teachers are usually not required to use textbooks, however, and many prefer to use other materials instead. Textbook publishing in the U.S. is a business primarily aimed at large states, especially California and Texas. This is due to state purchasing controls over the books. When publishers succeed in making a sale to either or both states, they are guaranteed a large print run and therefore a profitable product. The Texas State Board of Education spends in excess of $600 million on its central purchasing of textbooks.
Because textbook publishing is a competitive business, when mistakes occur they are costly to remedy and when objections to either the inclusion or the exclusion of material are voiced, the publishers attempt to compromise in an effort to make the sale. As a result of this procedure errors have been known to crop up in textbooks covering almost every subject.
[edit] College and university
In U.S. institutions of higher education, textbooks are chosen by the professor teaching the course, or by the department as a whole. Students buy their own copies of their books.
[edit] Criticisms and controversies
[edit] High school
In recent years, high school textbooks of United States history have come under increasing criticism. Authors such as Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States), Gilbert Sewall (Textbook Publishing), and James W. Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me) make the claim that U.S. History textbooks contain mythical untruths and omissions, which paint a whitewashed picture that bears little resemblance to what most students learn in universities. Inaccurately retelling history, through textbooks or other literature, has been practiced in many societies, from ancient Rome to the Soviet Union. History textbooks are not subjected to review by professional academics, nor can authorship of a high school textbook be used to advance an academic toward tenure at a university. The content of history textbooks thus lies entirely outside the academic forum of fact and social science and is instead determined by the political forces of state adoption boards and ideological pressure groups.
Science textbooks have been the source of some debates and have come under scrutiny from several organizations. The presentation or inclusion of controversial scientific material has been debated in several court cases. Poorly designed textbooks are also one theory on declining grades in mathematics and science in the United States and organizations such as the AAAS have criticized the layout, presentation, and amount of material given in textbooks.
The Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County brought forward a debate about secular humanist values being presented in textbooks.
In his popular book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, the late physics Nobel Prize laureate Richard P. Feynman described his devastating experiences as he once sat in a commission that evaluated science textbooks. At some instances, there were nonsensical examples to illustrate physical phenomena; then a company sent — for reasons of timing — a textbook that contained blank pages, which even got good critiques. Feynman himself experienced veritable attempts of bribery.
[edit] College and university
Many university students complain of unreasonably high textbook costs. Since the 1980s, textbook prices have risen much more rapidly than the overall rate of inflation [1].
Publisher representatives are paid, to a large part, based upon the sales of their books. It is therefore in their best interest to find ways to increase the sale of new books.
According to the National Association of College Stores, typically 12% of the price of a book goes to the author's royalties, 23% goes to the store, 32% pays for the publisher's paper, printing, binding, and editorial costs, and another 32% is taken by the publisher for profit or to cover expenses such as marketing and administration.[citation needed]
Some publishers sell copies of their textbooks to foreign markets at a much lower cost. The rationale is that these sales are additional, unpredictable income and should not be a factor in the pricing of textbooks in America. A study by a Duke University student found that, as the Internet has become more prevalent and facilitated the reimportation of international editions, publishers have responded by raising the price of the international editions. [2]
[edit] Used textbook market
As with many media products, a market for used textbooks exists. The goal of such trade is to acquire textbooks for less money than the price of new copies or to sell unneeded books to recoup some or all of their purchase price.
Most college bookstores allow students to sell their textbooks back to the store. This price is typically 50% of the original price if the book is going to be re-used at the same college. The books that are not being re-used typically yield zero to thirty percent of the new price. These wholesale prices are set by national used textbook companies and are based upon an economic model which predicts national sales of the books and compares them to inventory levels. Different companies set different prices.
An example of a book being purchased for a national used book company follows. First, the student sells the book back to their college bookstore. That book is then sold by the college bookstore to a national used book company. The same book is then sold to another college bookstore. Finally, that book is sold as used to a student at another college at a price that is typically 75% of the new book price. At each step a margin is applied to the book to enable the respective companies to continue to operate.
Students also tend to sell textbooks amongst themselves. After completing a course, sellers will often seek out members of the next enrolling class, people who are likely to be interested in purchasing the required books. This may be done by posting flyers to advertise the sale of the books or simply soliciting individuals who are shopping in the college bookstore for the same titles. Many larger schools have independent websites set up for the purpose of facilitating such trade. These often operate much like digital classified ads, allowing students to list their items for sale and browse for those they wish to acquire.
Used textbooks are also sold on a national and even global scale through online merchant and auction websites which allow shoppers to search many major new and used book sellers at a time for specific titles. Such services can usually locate books based on their title, ISBN or UPC.
[edit] Textbook exchanges
In response to escalating textbook prices, a few online textbook exchanges have arisen over the past few years that allow students to easily sell their textbooks directly to other students. The sites handle buyer and seller payments, and usually deduct a small commission only after the sale is completed.
[edit] Economics
With the large number of schools, subjects and grades in the United States, textbook publishing is a lucrative market, especially if a publisher can have a series of books adopted by politicians in a large state such as California or Texas. The five largest textbook publishers in the United States are: Thomson Learning, Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin and Harcourt General (a division of Reed Elsevier).
[edit] See also
- Kanawha County textbook controversy
- Wikibooks [3] - A sister project to Wikipedia whose goal is to create textbooks.
- Casebook - A special type of textbook used in law schools in the United States.
[edit] External links
- The Muddle Machine - Confessions of a Textbook Editor
- Textbook Revolution -- a site that catalogs and mirrors free textbooks
- Free Textbooks.eu -- Search engine for free textbooks in English, French and German
- Rip-off 101: Second Edition -- How the Publishing Industry's Practices Needlessly Drive Up Textbook Costs
- TSTC Publishing's Blog A blog devoted to the nuts & bolts aspects of college textbook (and related materials) publishing
