Dispatches from Adjunct Faculty: On Comp. Copies

by Oronte Churm, an obvious pseudonym

AT HINTERLAND UNIVERSITY, there are three ways to come by examination or desk copies of textbooks. The first is to email our textbook reps., who are unfailingly polite and prompt in filling requests. The second is to attend one of the “book fairs” that take place monthly in the copy room and ask the reps.—in this case, often just young people standing in for more seasoned reps—for free copies. (Some instructors ask for textbooks just to look legitimate; they’re really after the free pizza the reps. provide.) The third is to go to an administrative office in our building and take any of the hundreds of books organized by course, subject, and approach, on shelves to the ceiling.
The textbooks will be examined, or not, but all tend to pile up on our desks, floors, windowsills, and bookcases. And increasingly frequently, buyers drop by offices such as mine—once known as the “adjunct ghetto”—asking for “extra books you’re not using.”

It’s like John McPhee says: “the body of a fish tells you how that fish makes a living.” These men—always men—look tired, rumpled. They tend to chatter with their heads sideways to look at titles. One is a lean kid with bad teeth, who has no business card. Other buyers pull large leather cases on wheels and carry computerized inventory guns, but their heels are as worn as Willy Loman’s. The buyer evaluates the books—you weakly protest that this copy is being used or admit that one is old—then he pulls out a roll of cash. Suddenly you have $5 or $40 you didn’t have before; he loads his books into bags or onto a dolly and is gone.

“We call them ‘weasels,’” a sales rep. for a top textbook publisher, whom I’ll call Marie, says when I sit down with her over coffee to discuss the practice. “It’s grand larceny.”
Later she admits that as far as she knows, “The only law broken is not claiming that income on taxes. Maybe the IRS could stop it.”

Indeed, where’s the crime? The books were given to you, so why can’t you dispose of them as you wish? When I put out a call for Adjunct Advocate readers to talk about selling complimentary copies, Dick B. demanded I tell him what else he should do with them. When I said that “some people say to recycle the books, give them to students, etc.,” Dick replied, seemingly in exasperation, “Selling them IS recycling them. And what would students do with unassigned textbooks? And what’s ‘etc.’? I can’t think of any etceteras. Are you really doing a whole article on this?”

But AA reader George, when asked if he ever sold exam copies, responded with a curt: “NO.” When asked how he felt about the practice, he wrote only, “Unethical/stealing. Twice I have given a previous and outdated edition to a student who could not get a book for financial reasons. Warm regards.”
It’s tempting to introduce George to Dick and forego the article, but clearly in the gulf between them, there’s something to discuss.

Most would agree that intent plays a role. One reader wrote, “Haven’t done it in years, but I could tell you about the TAs at NYU Sociology Dept in the 1980s! Some of us ordered comps by the dozens (or 100s) and then took [them] down the street to B&N on 5th Ave. They would buy them all, no matter what was printed on them: NOT FOR SALE, etc.”

Stories like this abound, and Marie, the publisher’s rep., told me it was “well known” that a faculty member at one school financed his annual trip to Europe with the sale of free textbooks.

But how about this case? It too is from an AA reader:
“I was a full-time staff member in the writing center of a community college. [O]ur department founded a scholarship fund dedicated to the memory of a deceased faculty member. I offered to auction items donated by faculty members on eBay. All profits…were to be donated to the scholarship fund…most offered textbooks. I…sold these virtually new texts at prices considerably cheaper than other sellers…. I always made sure to include in the descriptions that these were examination copies of texts and were thus imprinted by the publishers. Buyers never seemed to mind…. In the end, we made nearly a thousand dollars from textbooks alone…we were able to award two scholarships the following year!
“Our department chair also collected ‘extra’ copies of current texts used in departmental courses. If the bookstore ran out…and students came by asking after books, the department would sell the ‘extras’ at a discount to students. [The money became] a petty cash fund used to buy items …not budgeted…. I know our department chair once advanced an adjunct faculty member pay out of the slush fund when that faculty member was experiencing a family emergency. Another time, the slush fund financed flowers sent to a staff member who was bereaved.”

I started to ask rep. Marie about this, but she cut me off. “They say it’s for scholarships,” she said. “Beer parties is more like it.”

She paused with the coffee cup at her lips. “Thing is, publishers don’t feel they can end this.” In fact, she said, “Publishers deserve a lot of blame.”

She mentioned a child development book published decades ago that started the practice of complimentary copies. Sales skyrocketed. To prevent resale of exam copies, publishers tried shipping books without all the chapters for a while, but teachers got mad. Marie added that it’s very expensive to run the first 8,000 copies, for instance, with a special message of “do not re-sell” printed on them. (I looked at the textbooks on my shelf; none have special markings.)

Another thing making this practice possible, she said, is that publishers tend to focus their “travelers,” or sales reps., on big accounts. The smaller markets get sent copies of books, often without being asked, which may not be useful at all—a kind of shotgun sales approach. Inevitably, textbooks stack up.

Bruce Hildebrand, Executive Director, Higher Education, Association of American Publishers, is more certain about what to do with these texts. “Nearly every exam or desk copy will have a return envelope with it for its return, if it isn’t adopted, or else directions for going to the publishers’ websites to get a sticker to mail it back for free. Publishers then recycle the books legitimately, or in many cases give incredible numbers of them to poor students in foreign countries.

“Sample book sales is the single most lucrative sector of the business,” he says; it’s the only condition needed to encourage book buyers. “The average new textbook sells at retail for about $52. That means the publisher’s wholesale price is around $40. A book buyer pays an adjunct 25 percent of wholesale price, $10, for his or her free copy, then sells it to a company that sells it online or to bookstores that sell it to a student for $45. That’s a 350 percent mark-up.”

Teachers around my department generally have no idea what percentage of their books’ list prices they’re paid, since they never looked to see what the books would have cost students if they were put on the syllabus.

“No one haggles,” Marie says. “They’re letting them go too cheaply.”

Marie told me about a former publishing rep. she knew who became a book buyer and claimed to make “a lot more” than Marie did. “He sent four kids through college,” she said with a grin. She wonders if “weasels” file tax returns.

More than one person counseled me to “follow the money,” so I took a look at FacultyBooks.com, an online book buyer (“we purchase ‘Complimentary Copy’ & ‘Free Copy’ textbooks,” its mail flyer says), and at the company linked on its website, CollegeBooksDirect.com (“your used textbook headquarters”). A quick check on the text Fieldworking, Second Edition, which I’m currently using, shows that Faculty Books is buying at the rate of $3.50 used, $4.00 new. College Books Direct sells the same ISBN for $26.73 used, $28.16 new, more like a 700 percent mark-up.
Hildebrand says, “Go over and look through books in your college bookstore. There are numerous copies marked ‘not for resale.’”

An administrator in my department has two thoughts on this; his office keeps a variety of texts on hand for instructors’ use, consideration, and reference: “I’m not going to sell them to buyers because they’re needed, and we won’t mess with the relationship with publishers that means good things…for students. On the other hand, if publishers are dumb enough to force books on people or give them in excess of what’s needed, then why wouldn’t those individuals sell them? No problem there.”

And when publishers moan that this drives up prices to students, he says, look at other ways money is spent by publishers, such as “the swag parties at the CCCCs convention.” (He admits publishers’ non-party swag is pretty weak compared to heart surgeons being taken to Hawaii for stent-coating lectures. “We get taken to lunch, maybe, and [my assistant] got a cheap clock for her desk.”)

Book rep. Marie insists that the middle-man system that profits from reselling complimentary copies does indeed drive prices up to students, and that some publishers do lightly alter book editions in order to fight its effects, but that her company doesn’t.

“We find other ways of cutting costs that counterbalance it,” she says. “We stopped packaging CDs with the books and put that content streaming online, for instance. But the damage has got to be in the millions.

“Every for-profit business must make a profit to stay in business. And when a publisher is profitable, we can afford to publish books for small-enrollment courses and, indeed, books that are original and deserve to be published but may not produce enough sales to cover costs.

“Besides, the weasels want to say they’re philanthropic, putting books into students’ hands. If that is true, why is there almost no relationship between the cost of used books and the price at which they’re bought?”

Bruce Hildebrand of AAP says that most people don’t take into account publishers’ fixed costs for new books beyond the ink, paper, and distribution. The largest cost of all is content—intellectual property. Book buyers, the wholesalers they work for, the bookstores that stock complimentary copies, and adjuncts who sell them, all divert earnings from those entitled to them.

Marie names companies she believes make “fortunes” this way, such as Follett’s, Nebraska Book Company, and Barnes & Noble, which she suggests might be as successful as they are due to their college bookstores division, not the retail stores pushed to limits with discounts and competition.

“And it’s not about T-shirts and key chains in college bookstores,” she says. “Those mean nothing. Used books are making all the money.”

When I asked the companies their policies on collecting and selling comp. copies, Nebraska Book Company sent me a statement that says, “Unless specified by the publisher, the textbook belongs to the faculty member.” The statement lists several options for disposing of the book, including selling it to campus bookstores, to students online, or to traveling buyers, but, “These traveling buyers are not employed by Nebraska Book Company.”

Follett Higher Education Group’s Fred Weber, Senior Vice-President, Wholesale Services, told me they do not employ book buyers, but neither do they check incoming books for complimentary copy markings. “We do buy from a variety of sources,” he says, “and I’m confident some are comp copies. If bookstores don’t want them, we don’t sell them to them.” His Wholesale Services division sells to some 700 bookstores owned or managed by Follett’s, and to other bookstores across the country.

Neither Barnes & Noble, Inc. nor Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc. could be reached for comment.

I also contacted five book buyers who visited my office this month to ask about their business. Only two responded; comparing them is perhaps useful to the degree that it shows the range of people working as buyers.

David is middle aged, has a gentle voice, and carries a leather traveling case and scan gun. When I ask if he will answer some questions by email, he writes, “Let’s try it out, I’m pretty comfortable [with what I do].” David is an “independent buyer” who works with a Maine company but also sells books directly to used bookstores. He works in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky, mostly, and is on the road 130-150 days per year. He guesses he gathers 1200-2500 books in that time, and is paid a mix of salary and commission.

When asked how he thinks publishers view his business, he writes:
“Of course they do not like it. They would rather have the student pay full retail for every book, with each and every update and change they make.
“When a prof asks me is it the right thing to do? I say, Is it right that new editions are always coming out, with changes like a few… graphs switched around, or a few sentences changed, and students have to pay full price again? A student could pass that book along to another family member…and save the parents another purchase…. Also that book sits on the shelf of the prof’s office and just goes out of date, wasting paper, money, when it can be made available to a student by either giving it to them as many profs do (I think that is good) or selling it to us, and we sell to students for reduced rates.
“Resources aren’t wasted, the student saves money, the prof makes some money, which may help with all the expense that comes out of their pocket each year to buy teaching materials and supplies for class preparation, that they are never paid for.
“[Publishing] is a business, when they send a prof a copy, they stand to make very large profits if a book is adopted, and its not based on altruistic ideals. Many prof authors tell me that the marketing and payment system is such that selling their book to me doesn’t really effect them much at all and doesn’t take away from their payments or royalties.”

The other buyer wants to remain anonymous. I’ll call him Slim. Slim looks about 19, wears torn jeans and could use a haircut. When I ask him how big the company is that he works for, he writes, “IM NOT SURE HOW BIG BUT BIG THE WARE HOUSE I TURN THEM INTO IS A OWNED BY A MAJOR BOOK COMPANY.” He serves some 26 colleges, is on the road “most” days of the year, and won’t reveal the number of books he collects. I ask if he stays away from certain areas on campus, and he says, “OF COUSE SOME OF THE TEACHERS ARE NOT THE NICEST I NEVER GO TO MAIN OFFICE.”

(A young buyer matching Slim’s description went to the Rhet office—twice—one day, got aggressive with the secretary who runs the world, and was tossed out and told not to bug anybody else. He went straight to the Lit office and insisted it would be “stupid” not to sell to him.)

“AS FOR US AS RISING UP THE COST OF BOOKS,” Slim concluded, “NO I DON’T THINK WE DO AT ALL THOSE BOOKS ARE ALL READY PRINTED AND SENT OUT AS ADVERTISMENT COST AND ALL READY FIGERD INTO THE COST BEFOR THE BOOK IS PRINTED LIKE A TV COMERCAIL.”

Many believe that complimentary copies are accounted for by their publishers. One AA reader wrote, “I have heard from an NYC editor who tells me that outside the world of education distribution copies in general are normally sold: that publishers understand this, incorporating costs within their profit loss/statements for the Feds.”

But Marie says it’s magical thinking that people use to feel okay about profiting from sample copies.

“New books used to sell on a five-year cycle,” she says. “They earned maybe 30 percent back on costs each year. Now, four months and it’s done, with copies sold on the Internet, or used, from the weasels. It’s going to affect what we sell and how we can do it. Excellent books don’t grow on trees.”

She offers me a square sign with an adhesive backing for my office, meant to ward off the weasels. She carries one herself on her rounds. It reads, “Selling review copies increases the cost of textbooks. Please do not ask me to sell them.”

“I’ve even walked in to an adjunct’s office,” she says, “and someone [mistaking me for a ‘weasel’] asked me if I wanted to buy some books. I asked if any were from [my company]. He said yes. I asked if he wanted me to take them back for him. He said no.

“It’s a matter of integrity, character. You help us, we help you. If it becomes obvious [an adjunct is selling his or her books], I won’t send any more.”