College Textbook Sales Drop, Online Piracy Possible Cause

Sales of new textbooks at some of the nation’s college presses are declining, and though many press directors are unsure why sales are slipping, others think it may have to do with online piracy of the books, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Textbook Sales Drop, and University Presses Search for Reasons Why,” Jennifer Howard, Sept. 4, 2008).

Recently, a reader notified the University of Chicago Press of a scanned copy of its best-selling The Chicago Manual of Style that was made freely available on the Internet.

Online piracy, where websites illegally offer electronic versions of the textbooks without permission from the publisher, also became a big problem at Princeton University Press this summer. Daphne Ireland, the press’s intellectual property director, came back from vacation to find her in-box crammed full of pirated versions of Princeton books. After conducting extensive research, her office located over 100 copies of pirated textbooks on the Internet that anyone could download.

Alex Holzman, director of Temple University Press and president of the Association of American University Presses, suspects that piracy may be a factor contributing to the industry’s decline in sales. “My gut is telling me that electronic downloading is adding seriously to what would normally be just a straightforward economic downturn,” he said. “There's something more going on here than in the past.”

Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press are seeing strong sales, while other university publishers are seeing significant drops. Since 2004, overall unit sales have declined 17 percent at the University of North Carolina Press. Unit sales have fallen off 12 percent since 2007 at the University of Illinois Press. And Temple University Press sales for July and August of this year are down 15 percent compared to this same time last year.

In addition to online piracy, University of Illinois press director Willis Regier points to the troubled economy, competition from sellers of used textbooks, and the difficulty of tracking online textbook sales for the decline in textbook sales at university presses.

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