Textbook Company to Lower Prices

Two weeks after a California student activist group accused college textbook publishers of inflating prices, one of the biggest companies in the industry said Wednesday it would introduce a new line of books to reduce costs by at least 25%.

The publisher, Thomson Higher Education, said it would cut wholesale prices on about 25 titles scheduled to arrive in bookstores this summer and fall. To achieve the savings, Thomson said, it would use fewer photos and less color in the reduced-price texts. It also will bring out some unbound editions in loose-leaf binders.

The books to be discounted, representing a tiny fraction of the texts that Thomson sells, cover a wide variety of fields including history, government, music and marine science.

One of the books, for instance, is a U.S. history text titled “American Passages,” which currently retails for more than $90. The wholesale price charged by Thomson is $70, but a new “compact” version, with fewer photos and illustrations, would be sold to retailers for $22.25.

Jessica Rohm, a Thompson spokeswoman, said her company could not predict what prices retailers would charge for the discounted books. But she said she assumed the savings at the wholesale level would be passed along to students.

She denied that the move had been taken in response to the Jan. 29 report on the college textbook industry by the California Student Public Interest Research Group. The report, called “Ripoff 101,” raised particular concerns about Thomson’s pricing practices.

“This is definitely not a reaction to that study or any other study, or anything other than us always being sensitive to our customers’ needs.” Rohm said. “We’re exploring every day new business models, new ways of delivering information ... the Internet, CDs, whatever.”

The CALPIRG report, based on surveys mainly at University of California campuses, along with several schools in Oregon, found that faculty members often believed that publishers had driven up costs by releasing unnecessary new editions. More than three quarters of the faculty members surveyed said that, at least half of the time, the new editions were not justified academically.

The report accused Thomson of bringing out new calculus textbooks with few revisions, solely to raise prices and push older editions out of the market.

In addition, the survey found that half of the new texts purchased by students had come bundled with additional instructional materials such as CD-ROMs and workbooks, also boosting costs.

Most faculty members surveyed said they rarely or never used such materials.

Merriah Fairchild, author of the CALPIRG report, said the Thomson announcement “proves what we said in the report, which is that publishers can easily make changes that will help to reduce the cost of textbooks for students.”

“For a long time, they were telling us they couldn’t do anything and now, all of the sudden, they can. So, we’re encouraged.”

Still, Fairchild said, Thomson’s action was only a first step toward addressing the issue.

“We still think it’s important that they offer books unbundled, that they only put out books when there’s new content in them and that they disclose to faculty the price so that faculty can take cost into consideration,” she said.

Ronald Miech, a UCLA professor who is vice chairman of the undergraduate math department, said Thomson’s plans to bring out cheaper versions of textbooks “is worth a try to see what the reception is.... There’s a chance it might be a success.”

Thomson Higher Education -- an arm of publishing giant Thomson Corp., which had sales last year of $7.8 billion -- brings out about 1,000 new textbook titles every year. It has more than 10,000 titles in stock.

Rohm said that if the effort was successful, it would be expanded.

In addition to the 25 discounted textbooks, Rohm said, the company would reduce prices on some electronic texts that haven’t been selling well.

She said electronic texts have not yet taken off in the publishing industry. The company hopes that reducing prices will generate a greater market, she said.