Sarah Chaney
speaker
34 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2017
last heard Dec 2017
Sarah Chaney’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yes, yeah, they actually can.
And it's a pretty interesting trend because for so many years, textbook prices were rising at a really rapid clip.
But in recent months, we've actually seen the reverse occur.
So prices for educational books and supplies, which is how
the Labor Department classifies textbooks have fallen on an annual basis for three consecutive months.
This actually started with a 1.6% annual decline in September, which was the fastest rate of decrease for the category of goods going back to 1967, which was when the Labor Department started tracking this data.
And in October and November, prices also fell.
And it's important to note that we're primarily talking about college textbooks here.
College textbooks account for about 90% of the goods in the educational books and supplies group.
It also includes books for elementary and high school classes, as well as encyclopedias.
Yes, that's pretty much accurate.
So the old model in which hardcover textbooks are sold in college bookstores is really being offended as a number of different competitive pressures, mainly in the online realm,
as well as students' demand for more affordable books propel traditional publishers to offer a lot of different cheaper options for students.
So these lower-priced digital options are coming through in the consumer price data for textbooks, and in some cases, like you said, we're actually seeing publishers lower prices for print textbooks.
So, for example...
Macmillan Learning, which is a textbook provider and online learning company, said it has reduced its average print textbook prices by somewhere between 20 and 25 percent in the 18 months ended in October.
And this was in part due to students demanding more affordable books and materials.
Sure.
There's obviously Amazon, and that's a huge force.
That's a site that a lot of students are going to first before they even check the campus bookstore prices, etc.,
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