Watch Channel 5’s Story about Our Textbooks Report

Read our testimony from the recent House hearing on HB 1200 

Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks, which is 20% of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college!  And the prices keep going up.  We think that textbooks should be reasonably priced, students should be able to easily sell their books and used books should be easy to find.  Students also shouldn’t be required to buy additional CD-ROMs and workbooks that might not even be used in their classes.  Unfortunately, these items often come bundled with the textbook which inflates the price of the book even more and makes the books harder to sell back at the end of the semester.

MASSPIRG recently worked with State Representative Stephen Walsh to draft a bill that, if passed, will solve part of the problem for students in Massachusetts.  The bill requires sales reps from publishing companies to disclose the price of their books when they are offering them to faculty.  This will equip all faculty members to consider the price of the books that they order for students in their classes if they choose to. In addition, the bill will ban the practice of ‘bundling’ in Massachusetts, so if publishers choose to make additional materials available, they must be made available for purchase separately from the textbook.  These reforms will help students save money on books and will also benefit the used book market.  This semester MASSPIRG chapters around the state are working to build support for this bill on campus by releasing a report and holding visibility events to make sure that the media continues to focus on the issue.  Plus we’re working with our local legislators to gain their support on the bill.

Around the country, students and professors are fighting back. They're refusing to buy books from publishers unless they're cheaper, unbundled and on the market for longer. They're ordering cheaper books from British websites. They're trading books with each other at online book swaps like CampusBookswap.com. And publishers are feeling the heat: they're putting out lower priced books and negotiating deals with faculty who push.

Rep. Steven Walsh's Affordable Textbooks Bill co-sponsors:

Rep. Peter Kocot
Sen. Mark Montigny
Rep. Timothy Toomey
Rep. Steven D'Amico
Rep. Dennis Guyer
Rep. John Fresolo
Rep. Stephen Canessa
Rep. Lida Harkins
Rep. Mary Grant
Rep. Kathi- Anne Reinstein
Rep. David Nangle
Rep. Christopher Donelan
Rep. Denise Provost
Rep. James Timilty
Rep. Christine Canavan
Rep. Jennifer Callahan