Our View about textbook industry ‘missed the mark’
I appreciate The Daily doing a feature over my textbook Tuesday.
The reporter got most of the details right, but one thing I would like to clarify is that I am donating the royalties I earn at OU to a textbook scholarship fund, not all of the royalties I earn from book sales nationwide.
The accompanying editorial, however, missed the mark.
The people behind the textbook industry are not “cheating you and stealing your money” any more than your hairdresser, the Bic pen company or our fine local restaurants.
Publishers are businesses. They provide high-quality educational materials that require a tremendous amount of time and money to write, illustrate, edit, review and produce.
The price for a new textbook is high because publishers have only a year or two of new book sales to recover their entire investment before used books flood the market. Only bookstores — not publishers — profit from each sale and re-sale of a used book.
The editorial implies that publishers are somehow resisting the transition to e-books.
On the contrary, publishers would love to sell more e-books, but, so far, students and professors have been slow to catch on.
The e-books of the past were essentially PDF versions of print books, but publishers are working hard to develop formats that are readable on screen and that add interactive “extras” like animations, video clips, podcasts and other features that cannot be integrated into a print book.
Before you purchase your books for next semester, check http://www.coursesmart.com/ or ask your professors this question: “Is an e-book available?”
If it is, and you purchase it, you’ll save money and trees, and you’ll help move OU toward the future of textbook publishing.
Mariëlle Hoefnagels, Botany and microbiology professor
Boren generous to university, deserves praise
A recent report about OU President L. David Boren’s salary did not tell the whole story. There is more the OU community should know.
Since he has been president, he and Molly Shi Boren have donated over $1 million to the university, and they have also made the institution the beneficiary of a $1.5 million in life insurance policies.
He has also donated all proceeds from his recent book, A Letter to America, to the Sooner Heritage Scholarship Fund and the OU Press.
This additional recent donation will exceed $200,000.
Boren has also taught classes for 28 semesters without compensation.
We should also not forget his leadership in raising more than $1 billion for OU in private donations.
Performance matters in compensation.
I know of no university president who has been more generous to the university he serves than David Boren.
He deserves our appreciation.
Jon Stuart, Chairman, OU Board of Regents
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
andybabb 3 years, 6 months ago
Exactly.
Stop complaining, everyone. The textbook industry is the only one where you get even CLOSE to half your money back, then turn around and use it for more books.
New textbooks are published because the main publishers (Pearson, McGraw Hill, etc) don't make money on used books, just like Hoefnagels said.
JJanowiak 3 years, 6 months ago
It's funny that people complain so much about textbook prices. Sure, it's a broken market, but have you thought about some alternatives? How about you buy that book, spend an hour or two at the fancy BookEye at the library, scan that sucker, and sell it back? Or (gasp!) take a risk and buy the old edition because I bet you're teacher isn't going to assign you a test on the new material. Half.com is your friend, sucka.
And Dr. Hoefnagels is a great professor (so is her husband!) so you should give her (or her husband!) a great big bear hug the next time you see them.