by Patricia Rockwell

Created on: January 11, 2009   Last Updated: December 10, 2009

During my over forty years of college teaching there were times when I resold complimentary copies of textbooks and times when I didn't. For me, it was primarily an ethical issue, but not always one that was easy to determine.

Before this question can be fairly answered, several additional pieces of information must be obtained. First, did the faculty member request the book copy? This is important, because if so, the assumption is that the faculty member is considering adopting this book for a course and wishes to examine it to see if it would be an appropriate text. If the faculty member had not requested the copy, it is unlikely the textbook would have been sent. If the faculty member has requested the textbook, I do not believe it is ethical to resell it. In this instance, the faculty member has received something free on the basis of his/her position.

On the other hand, if the book publisher arbitrarily mails multiple copies of a new textbook to hundreds of faculty members on a list and the copy of the book is not requested, then I believe this textbook is comparable to junk mail and faculty members are free to do whatever they want with the book give it away, use it, throw it out, or sell it. Publishers who decry the resale of comp textbooks might consider being more discriminating about whom they send their complimentary copies to.

A second question concerns who actually benefits from complimentary textbooks. Believe me, faculty members are not making a bundle from reselling comp textbooks. Who is? Textbook publishers, that's who.

Publishers more than recoup what they might lose on distributing comp textbooks that are not adopted, by selling to the students of the faculty who do adopt the textbook. When just one faculty member adopts a textbook for a course that enrolls even 100 students a semester, if that book is used for several years, that's 400 textbooks sold at a minimum, and with the cost of textbooks soaring, most publishers can well afford to send comp books to every faculty in a target department at multiple institutions.

In my teaching experience, I received free textbooks for courses that I not only did not teach, but wasn't even qualified to teach. Publishers seem to care very little about sending comp textbooks to appropriate faculty members. This sort of gunshot approach to marketing tells me that textbook publishers are not worried about the expense of distributing large numbers of comp textbooks. If just one out of a thousand complimentary textbooks interests just one faculty member and prompts them to adopt it, the publishers can easily recoup their promotional expenses.

Finally, the number of complimentary textbooks any one faculty member accumulates during the course of a career is not all that large. When I retired two years ago, I gathered together all my comp textbooks that were gathering dust on my office bookshelves and sold them to my friendly book reseller. I think from my over forty year career there were about fifteen books and I made around $25.00. Wow!

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