Supreme Court decision on legality of reselling textbooks

[GMTplus7]

Supreme Court will hear case with major implications for textbook prices | Inside Higher Ed

"The Supreme Court on Monday announced that it will rule on whether enterprising re-sellers can hawk cheaper versions of textbooks, produced for students overseas, to U.S. students at a discount.

The High Court granted a writ of certiorari to John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. Supap Kirtsaeng -- a case that pits a big-time textbook publisher against an enterprising graduate student and could have major implications for how much publishers charge for their textbooks, both in the United States and abroad"


I can't believe this is even a legal case. It's not like the student was buying fake designer handbags and reselling them as the real deal. These were real textbooks produced by the same publisher.

[sylvan8798]

I have several of the foreign edition textbooks. Lots of students try to get them to save money on books.

[BCEagle91]

I bought one of these on Amazon a few years ago for a course my son was taking. The website said that it was an international edition and couldn't be sold in the US. I clicked "Buy" and it sold it and delivered it to me.

I know people that have traveled to India that bought their versions of the textbooks for a few dollars (~$100 in the US). They are printed on really awful paper and the textbook will not last but it may be useful for one semester. I've purchased textbooks in a foreign country too which seemed really cheap. I compared them to the same textbook in a US bookstore and it was the exact same book.

I imagine that textbooks sold in other countries may say that they are not for resale in other countries.

[PghMomof2]

It reminds me of the discussion about pharmaceuticals, except they can't possibly say that the foreign version would be harmful to the student - at least not with a straight face.

[Hunt]

Unless those foreign editions are being sold at a loss, it seems hard to justify the US prices.

[weatherga]

The US/foreign pricing probably works something like it does in pharmaceuticals. I think it goes like this. The bulk of the producer (drug company, publisher)'s market is in the US. They have high US pricing that covers the costs of developing the product and provides a profit that the producer is happy with. Then they look at the foreign market. Foreign consumers tend to have less money to spend on the product. It won't sell at the US price. However, foreign sales are pretty much all upside, because the US customers are already covering the product development costs. So it makes sense for the producer to make extra revenue by offering the product in the foreign markets, at a price that makes it accessible to foreign consumers.

Of course, internet ordering throws a wrench into this arrangement. It remains to be seen how it will all work out. Meanwhile, it seems that many US consumers aren't buying the producers' arguments that the foreign version of their product is an unsafe choice.

[Hunt]

Won't this also be a moot issue when textbooks--inevitably--go digital?

[BCEagle91]

I imagine that there will be some kind of country code attached to E-Textbooks.

[IJustDrive]

Hunt -- not really. The issue will be the license agreement for the digital textbook. Can you resell? (I.e., does the First Sale doctrine apply to digital texts? How about foreign-market texts?) Can there be different license agreements for different markets? Is such a license agreement a contract of adhesion, as some courts have said about software license agreements?)

It's actually an interesting legal question which could have HUGE implications.

[sylvan8798]

Originally Posted by Hunt

Unless those foreign editions are being sold at a loss, it seems hard to justify the US prices.

The ones I have are paperbacks, while the American editions were hardcover. Also the paper was probably cheaper.

[Hunt]

I assume that the license for the digital textbooks won't allow any reselling at all.

[BCEagle91]

I suspect that you won't be able to move them from one system to another. If I were a book-seller, I'd want the DRM in place so that customers couldn't move things around.

[dietz199]

Frankly, I think the text book pricing/price fixing should be brought to the court under a violation of the RICO act.

[xiggi]

They have high US pricing that covers the costs of developing the product and provides a profit that the producer is happy with.

Considering the multiple serial versions of textbooks, the cost of developing "new products" is negligible. Did we really need Stewart 6E or 7E? Has the world of Calculus changed THAT much that students need different versions?

The reality is that this is an industry that has lived on a combination of making sweet deals with the people who decide what textbooks students need and, in turn, relying on extreme price gouging of the same students. Textbooks are often a real source of income for authors and institutional sellers.

One other reality is that we do NOT really need those bloated books filled with images and excessive data. Countries that leave us in the dust in the K-12 world do not use the silly books our moronic administrations decided we needed. K-12 and college books that cost more than 100 dollars are a reflection of an industry that has lost all sense of control, especially spending control. It is, however, not very hard to point to the source of the problems: easy money and blatant corruption at all levels. Wonder why little to no legal action has been taken? Lobbying forces, unions, and willing politicians are not strange bedfellows.

Rest assured that the members of that industry and their academic accomplices are spending plenty of time making sure to keep the racket going by clawing into the digital delivery of books. Just as this lawsuit indicates, they will go to the extreme to protect their cornucopia.

[dietz199]

Has the world of Calculus changed THAT much that students need different versions?

I have grumbled that exact question under my breath numerous time. D had to purchase the 'NEW and IMPROVED" calculus book in HS. The NEW and IMPROVED version just reordered some chapters! Similar situations for other math texts in DS case. Yes, the f(x) has changed so dramatically that we need to charge you $150 for the NEW explanation. Again, this is a case of price fixing and coercion which should be tried under RICO!

The latest OMG version of this story is the shrink wrapped 'book' which is basically X number of photo copied pages with hole punches. DD has had to purchase several of these to the tune of $150+ each! Oh, yeah, these are the books written by the professor....who 'improves' on his work regularly.