Professors, distributors profit from black-market books

Have you ever bought a textbook that had black tape over part of the front cover, spine and a large portion of the back cover? If not, you probably will at some point. If so, then you have bought a "black market" book.

Nationally, there is a growing marketplace that most students do not know about. Call it the "black market" of textbooks.

Complimentary copies of textbooks are being bought and sold unethically and are contributing to the rising cost of a college education.

Students only buy textbooks twice a year, but the reality is textbooks are being bought and sold all year; they just don't make it to the student until the beginning of the semester.

The "black market" of textbooks runs without many of us knowing about it and is a problem both for students and publishers.

Publishing companies want professors to choose their books to use in class, so they send professors samples of textbooks (at no charge) to review.

These samples are to be reviewed by the professor and then returned to the publisher or destroyed. Nationally, however, some professors are selling these books to "book bandits" for $5 to $20, as was the case with former Seton Hall psychology professor, Byron Hargrove.

The Star-Ledger reported Hargrove was working in conjunction with two other collaborators and ordering samples of more than 2,000 textbooks, which he sold for an average of $10 to $15. He was prosecuted for theft of more than $100,000 in textbooks and ordered to pay a fine.

The textbooks bought by "book bandits" are then sold to book distributors for roughly twice the price they were purchased for. At this point, the distributor covers the "Complimentary Edition" or "Instructor's Edition" or "Review Copy" with black tape to hide the fact that it is not a legitimate copy for purchase from the publisher.

They also cover information that publishers include on these textbooks about returning them and how selling them contributes to higher textbook prices for students.

These copies are sold to textbook stores on college campuses around the nation with a mark up of as much as 300 percent, according to a prominent publishing executive who prefers to remain anonymous.

Bookstores, many like our own Book Exchange, then mark the books up to market value and sell them to students.

Joey Arbuckle, the textbook manager of the Downtown Book Exchange, commented that he doesn't really know how, but "(the black market textbooks) make it into the market."

Arbuckle said he sells what the distributor supplies the store with.

He continued to explain that those are the textbooks they get from their distributors, and they sell them to students, as if they were regular used copies bought back from students.

That same publishing executive explained the process. The book that you hold in your hand, covered in black masking tape, started out as a complimentary copy given to a professor to review for use in their class.

A "book bandit" then bought it for between $5 to $20, which goes directly into the pocket of professors. The bandit doubles (or nearly so) their money selling this book to the distributor who disguised the identity of this book and sold it to a used bookstore for more than the $10 to $40 they bought it from the bandit for, probably closer to between $30 and $120.

The bookstore puts it on a shelf that correlates with your class and sells you this complimentary copy incognito for the market price, which probably ranges from $55 to $215.

For example, a student could purchase a $215 textbook from a professor for $20 (who paid nothing for it), a book bandit for $20, the book distributor for $80 and your local used book supercenter for only $95.

The sad thing is, you won't get four copies of the book to generously share with your friends, nor will you get more than $40 or $50 out of it when you sell it back to your favorite bookstore.

The biggest problem for students in this supply chain is not the unethical behavior of the professor or the simple capitalistic behavior of the book vendors taking advantage of a profitable market; it is the publisher's loss.

This creates an additional advantage to constantly updating the edition of their textbooks to eliminate some of the used and "black market" copies.

Textbooks are expensive to produce. There are anywhere from $6 million to $8 million invested in a 1,000-page biology textbook on behalf of the publisher.

Each copy circulated through the textbook market that was not purchased from the textbook publisher increases their cost for each new textbook they sell.

We need to tackle this problem as close to the source as possible, starting with professors.

Our professors are fantastic, and none of them would ever do anything intentional to harm students.

However, I don't think it's as apparent when a "book bandit" comes to their office and offers to take a few textbooks off their hands that they are directly causing harm to students and the affordability of college.

When a professor or other faculty or staff member sells this book for their own personal gain, they are using their position for personal gain, which is quite unethical, even if they don't realize it.

To combat the source, legislators in Oklahoma enacted a 2007 statute which directly prohibits the trade of, by bookstore or professor, free-edition textbooks in the state of Oklahoma. Lower textbook prices are a distant dream, but the fight has to start somewhere, and it has started in Oklahoma.

West Virginia University must take an aggressive stance against the purchase and sale of free-copy textbooks by any member of the University. This would include enacting policies by the Student Government Association, the Faculty Senate, the Staff Senate and the school's administration that clearly say, "WVU will not tolerate the sale of complimentary textbooks."

We must rely on the integrity of our faculty, staff and student body to hold our fellow Mountaineers and ourselves to a higher standard of ethics.

Our state laws on the purchase and sale of complimentary textbooks should mirror those of Oklahoma.