Rx for Textbook Sticker Shock

“Bagging a Textbook Bargain” [September 15-22] missed one point which I discovered when my daughter returned to college. That point is why are college students being charged such high prices for textbooks when the same books are sold overseas for significantly lower prices? Her college bookstore was selling one of her textbooks for $160. When she ordered the book for just $40 I was skeptical, but when the book arrived brand new and in a plastic wrapper, just like the copies in the bookstore I was a convert. There was one difference between this book and the one at the bookstore. Stamped on the book was the phrase”Not for Sale in North America.” What I discovered is that book publishers are like the drug companies. They charge radically different, and much lower, prices in other countries. Ordering her textbooks through this gray market saved a remarkable 70 percent over what she would have paid at her campus bookstore.

Ira Spieler
Via E-mail