Gail Burkhardt
For The Post
---
Sophomore Beth Lipton, spent about $250 on her four books this quarter.
When she sells her books back, she usually gets less than half of what she paid, she said.
Situations like Lipton's lead students to wonder, Where does my money go?
The National Association of College Stores, a trade association for bookstores and publishers, has provided an average of where each cent of a dollar in a new textbook goes.
NACS has about 31,000 store members, including Follett's University Bookstore, College Book Store and Specialty Books in Athens, and 1,100 publisher members across the United States, said Charles Schmidt, spokesman for NACS.
According to the model on NACS.org, 11.7 percent of a book's cost goes to the author's royalties and 1 percent of the book's cost covers freight fees.
A total of 22.7 percent of the cost of each book goes to the store for income, operations and salaries and 64.6 percent goes to the publisher, which covers the marketing costs, administrative costs, the publisher's income, and the paper, printing and editorial costs.
A large percentage of the textbook publisher McGraw-Hill Education's wholesale prices are determined by: author royalties
paper printing and binding investments in editorial development and digital product development
marketing
instructor resources
and support materials
general and administrative costs
and freight costs
said Director of Communications for McGraw-Hill Education Tom Stanton in an e-mail.
College Bookstore in Athens buys books wholesale from the publisher and then charges a list price that the publisher sets, so bookstores across the country have similar prices, Michael Fitterer, the store's general manager, said.
The store sells used textbooks for 25 percent less than new books and buys back all books that have a requisition for the following quarter for half of what the student originally paid, he said. Any other books that are not needed for the next quarter are sold to wholesale companies around the country. The wholesale company sets the prices, he added.
Many students think that the individual stores are gouging them on textbooks, but the stores are trying to keep the prices as low as possible for students, Schmidt said. Stores probably make more on other merchandise, like clothing, Schmidt said.
Students are trying to find ways to save money.
I won't buy a textbook
unless I know I'm going to use it
said Jennifer Adkins, a student studying exercise physiology, adding that she usually buys her books used over the Internet.
