I rang up the books and eyed the total. “That'll be $325.14. Would you like a bag?” “No, thanks,” the student replied, and walked out with a receipt and two books. Two books, $325? If you haven't purchased a textbook recently, you're in for a surprise.

It's true that most textbooks are less than $150 a pop. But this year, the college bookstore where I work has its first books priced north of $200. That price tag is painful in any year, but when people are hurting, it's a travesty.

When I started working in a college store, in 1981, the federal minimum wage was $3.35 and, as I recall, some hardbacks were approaching $29.95 (they may have been less—I don't believe any were over $40). That meant a student working for the minimum wage had to work almost nine hours to afford a textbook (before tax). Today, that same student working for the minimum wage in California of $8 an hour has to work more than 18 hours to buy a $150 textbook, and with one of the $200-plus specimens, we're talking 25-plus hours of labor (not including tax).

So with the cost of books heading toward the ionosphere, publishers must be profiting, right? Well, not exactly. While the student mentioned above forked over $325 for two titles, many other students are finding ways around spending big bucks.

For decades, students have adjusted to price increases by trying to avoid buying new books whenever possible. Our store's top selling point is that we carry a ton (many tons, actually) of used books. But the search for lower prices doesn't stop there. Recently I spoke with an accounting professor who told me she was getting inundated with requests from students wanting to know what books she was using so they could go online and purchase international editions. And students aren't only seeking out foreign versions of their textbooks—old editions are also seeing a second life. Indeed, I've seen syllabuses listing both the current and previous edition with an accompanying notation saying either is acceptable. It's also not uncommon for a syllabus to direct students online to buy previously owned books.

Rental books have also been added to the equation. While students can go online to rent books from textbook lending sites, our store is carrying 12 titles for students to borrow this semester. They sold out before our traditional used books. Digital books have also seen an uptick in sales. This semester we have 265 titles available in electronic editions, and with prices reduced to around 40% or 50% off the new hardcover price, an increasing number of students are willing to download a book or read it online.

Of course, cheap is nice, but free is better. This summer I had a professor who wanted to borrow books from our store. That's no problem; we lend books all the time while a professor obtains a desk copy from the publisher. In this case, however, the professor wanted to borrow two copies of each book. “I've never done this before,” he explained, “but I need one for me, and students want me to put a book on reserve in the library, too.”

The high cost of books has a seamy side, too. This past July, for the first time ever, con artists hit our store, attempting to buy textbooks with bad checks and resell them online. Fortunately, our security guards caught them. Still, every time I see a brand-new, copyright 2010 hardcover textbook for sale on the Internet for way under cost, I wonder if the Web isn't the biggest fencing operation in the history of the world.

I don't profess to know the solution. Perhaps it's e-books, or maybe something more traditional: could it be that the publishers who put out course material in a shrink-wrapped, three-hole-punched format (making buyback problematic, because of the possibility of missing pages) are onto something? One thing's certain: before I find myself stocking the shelves with 2010 books priced at $250 or $300, the industry has to find a way to get students off the escalator that only leads up.

Author Information
Tom Simpson works at Aztec Shops, San Diego State University's bookstore.