With the semester's end quickly approaching, selling back textbooks is on a lot of students' minds. But just where do students find the most cash for their paperbacks? Where exactly does book money go? Each year students spend an abundance of their money on textbooks. The scary thing about buying books is it isn't getting any cheaper. "We go by the industry standard, they say that the physics book is a certain price, and we have to adhere to that," Mike Campbell, manager of the Marshall University Bookstore, said. "The key factor that determines the best dollar value is if that book being reused again on campus, when that happens students can get up to half of the book's price back." The prices of books have gone from bad to worse over the past few years. However, the National Association of College Stores said there are nine factors that go into every dollar spent on textbooks, and each of these factors has a certain percentage as to how the dollar is allocated. "Books are just too much," Shaunte Polk said. "It gets worse every year." The biggest percentage, 32.5 cents on the dollar, comes from the publisher's paper, printing and editorial costs. This covers manufacturing costs from editing to paper costs to distribution, as well as storage, record keeping, billing, employee's salaries and benefits. About 15 cents are aimed toward the publisher's marketing costs. Marketing, advertising, promotion, publisher's field staff and professors' free copies are included. The authors income is next, taking about 11 cents, which entails the author's royalty payment. With that payment, the author pays research and writing expenses. College store personnel take another about 11 cents on the dollar. This handles store employees salaries and benefits to handle ordering, receiving, pricing, shelving, cashiers, customer service, refund desk and sending extra textbooks back to the publisher.
Ten cents of the textbook dollar goes to the Publisher's General and Administrative. This includes federal, state, and local taxes, excluding sales tax, paid by publishers.
The Publisher's Income, which takes 7.1 cents, pays for new product development, author advances, market research and dividends to stockholders. 5.9 cents of every dollar for books goes towards the Bookstores everyday operations. Things like insurance, utilities, building and equipment rent are paid though this percentage. The last percentages, 4.9 cents and 1 cent, are for the Bookstore income and freight expense respectively. After understanding now what goes into every dollar at the bookstore the numbers are starting to add up, which brings me to my next question. How much higher are books going to cost before people stop buying them and revert to different versions available? "Overtime price develops competition and competition develops lower prices," said Campbell. "I don't see books ever going away however more and more I see online editions being available for students as well."
Will Selbee can be contacted at selbeejr@marshall.edu.
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