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Textbook Publisher Payola MarketingThe textbook publisher industry has narrowed to handful of big players. The pressure amongst these publishers to land profitable, large enrollment adoptions for competing textbooks creates costly marketing expenses. A large portion of the initial publishing run for a textbook goes into producing free review copies given away to professors in hopes of winning the adoption of their publication. Most professors have no need for all these free review copies and many professors immediately sell these books to the used book wholesalers. This practice has the publishers shooting themselves in the foot. The publishers experience an immediate loss of sales as these “used” review copies are available to the market before the new edition even hits the shelf! The publishers will also offer to fund computers, lab equipment and other hardware for schools in hopes of “buying” the profitable large enrollment adoptions. Who’s footing the bill for all these cavalier marketing tactics? Surely the publishers wouldn’t pass these costs on to the poor starving college students, would they? Unfortunately capitalism does work in this instance as the costs are passed down to the consumer.
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