College students all over the world pay exorbitant amounts of money each semester to afford another set of required textbooks. The only difference between the United States and the rest of the world is that American students pay considerably more for those very same textbooks.

American textbooks, always a financial blow to college students, are being offered overseas at greatly reduced prices, much to the chagrin of students and administrators alike.

On the American version of Amazon.com, a new ‘Elementary Statistics’ book sells for $101. On the British Amazon.com, the same book sells for $75.84.

‘[U.S.] publishers sell to foreign wholesalers at prices that are greatly reduced,’ said Laura Nakoneczny, spokeswoman for the National Association of College Stores. ‘I don’t understand it; they have no determinable basis for doing this.’

Judith Pratt, director of communications at the Association of American Publishers, had an explanation for differing textbook prices.

‘Book publishers, as virtually every other entity, must price to the market,’ Pratt said. ‘The fact that publishers can sell overseas at all lowers the costs of books here.’

Pratt said it is extraordinarily expensive to create a college textbook and the process can take years, sometimes at costs of more than $1 million.

‘Textbooks will not sell like a John Grisham bestseller,’ Pratt said.

Textbook publishers expect to sell about 40,000 copies of a book, unlike the millions a bestseller would sell. Pratt said seven cents is made for every dollar spent, after taxes. As more students go to college overseas, the growing demand for books creates more and more instances of piracy.

In a press release, Pat Schroeder, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said, ‘Industries seeking help from the U.S. government to combat piracy abroad must price their goods to the local market in order to provide affordable legitimate alternatives to pirated versions.’

Nakoneczny said the National Association of College Stores has had a dialogue with publishers for about 18 months, but there is still no progress.

‘Our goal is to get the same discounts that are overseas passed on to American students,’ Nakoneczny said.

The lower-priced textbooks are available to United States students, but there are risks associated with buying books from overseas.

In addition to the time it may require for books to ship, books published overseas are marked with a tag that designates that the books are not for resale in the United States. American students would risk getting in trouble with the law if they are caught.

This is the same reason why Kathleen Bradley, the text and general book division manager at Syracuse University, does not resell books from overseas.

‘I think some universities do [buy from overseas],’ Bradley said. ‘But what kind of example would I be setting to resell books in the United States?’

Instead, Bradley and the university have tried to make buying books easier and less costly.

‘My responsibility is to make sure students have the supplies they need to be successful,’ Bradley said. ‘We try to do it at the best price we can.’

‘College stores operate as a student service and provide students with the lowest prices available,’ Nakoneczny said. ‘The differing prices change before the retail level.’

Although the price might be higher, Bradley assured it is still worth it to buy American books.

‘Students here have access to the best materials,’ Bradley said. ‘Sometimes the books that are available overseas are not exactly the right copy that a student might be looking for.’

New York state does not put sales tax on books that are recommended or required by faculty. The Syracuse University Bookstore also does everything it can to make the books cheaper.

The store tries to sell as many used books as possible. Also, when a professor requests a book that might come with a CD-ROM, the bookstore will ask if the disc is necessary.

The bookstore itself will also print books with selected articles from a number of different sources in order to keep students from buying books that may be only used for a few articles.

Bradley said the university would buy back books from any SU student as long as they are the correct editions. Books bought overseas have a different identification number than books bought in the United States and occasionally have slight differences from their American counterparts, making it impossible for the university to buy back the books.

While Nakoneczny asserted that there is no difference between the foreign and American versions of the textbooks, Bradley thought otherwise.

‘This year, there have been a few people who have gone online and bought textbooks,’ Bradley said. ‘They came to the bookstore and said that they didn’t get the right edition, or their books were different.’

Published on October 29, 2003 at 12:00 pm