Recently, two of the top three college textbook publishers announced plans to get into the textbook rental business. On its face this seems like a good deal for college students, but the real question is whether this heralds a beginning of cheaper textbook prices or is just another pricing stunt from an industry famous for stunting.

For years, the college textbook publisher business model has been consistent. Most of the revenues the publisher gets for a new edition comes in the first semester. Over the remaining life of that edition, competition and used books chew up an increasing amount of the market share and reduce the publisher revenues to a trickle. This is why publishers charge high prices for the books so they can be sure to recoup their expenses. From a student’s perspective, the average cost of that textbook is similar — almost all copies that first semester cost full retail price, with cheaper used books making up more of the volume in subsequent semesters. Used book dealers make their money after the first semester assuming they bet correctly on the books still being in demand. (Meaning, they buy back books they think will be in need again, and decline to buy back books that won't be used and longer.)

(See how the money gets divided in the secret behind textbook costs.)

In a textbook rental scenario, things change for everyone:

• Publishers get less money that first semester (reflecting the 40-70% of retail price floated by Cengage), but continue to get similar revenue levels in subsequent semesters because there are few if any used books. Their revenue curve, which before was extremely front-loaded, is now more level. In fact, the ongoing revenue potential could in some cases extend the hyper-accelerated revision cycle leaving the same edition in play for longer (further raising the profitability of that edition.) Sounds like a win for the publisher.
• Students get to spend less that first semester for their textbook, but in subsequent semesters can end up paying more since there are no more cheap used books. (This is especially true in cases where the student wants to keep the textbook, since in the absence of used books they are forced to purchase at full price.) Sounds like a loss for the student unless they’re in that first semester.
• Used book dealers really get screwed on this one, since their supply and market both dry up entirely. A resounding LOSS for them.

For years the used book market has been kicking the publishers' asses, revenue-wise. For a while they had some success with bundling the textbook with workbooks or CDs/DVDs, knowing that bookstores wouldn’t buy those back and forcing them to replenish their stocks from the publisher (at full price). Now, with rentals, it appears that they’ve hit on another tactic that could solve their problem.

How about the college student’s problem of higher textbook costs, though? It doesn’t seem like their expenses are getting a reduction… #FAIL

 

Thanks to your votes for nominations and first round of voting, College-Cram is a finalist for this year's awards in the "How To" category. Mashable recognizes social networking websites in various categories in its annual awards competition. College-Cram is nominated as "How-To" since Mashable doesn't feature a "social learning" category (yet). In fact, College-Cram.com is the only social learning site in the Open Web Awards competition this year, and it will take the help of students on campuses around the world to put them over the top in the final round of voting.

Social learning is a mashup of social networking and educational resources. Many websites offer tools or frameworks that help students organize themselves, but a true social learning site also has actual academic help for students trying to pass their courses. College-Cram is a true social learning site. Rudy Lopes, (VP of Operations) said “Maybe if we win, next year they will add a social learning category. That would be a good thing.”

You can vote once per day for each email address you have. When you submit your vote you receive an emailed confirmation link to complete the vote. College-Cram.com made it easy to vote by pre-filling the form to the left - just add your email address and click submit.

If you are concerned about giving out your email addresses (and you should be), we voted last year and heard nary a peep back all year. This is administered by PollDaddy – the same folks who run polls for us from time to time. We trust them or we wouldn’t be asking you to participate.”

As they say, “Vote early and vote often!” Voting runs through December 14, 2008.

The presidential election is over, but the Mashable 2nd Annual Open Web Awards voting is just starting. This is your chance to tell the world how you feel about College-Cram.com.

College-Cram.com has been nominated for Mashable’s Open Web awards. Our nomination is in the "How To" category. You can vote once per day for each email address you have – and I have several. They send you a confirmation link to complete the vote.

We made it easy to vote by pre-filling the form for you - just add your email address and submit the form below.

(Note: Voting is closed for this award.)

Mashable recognizes social websites in various categories each year. College-Cram is a social learning site - mashup of social networking and educational resources. (We nominated ourselves as "How-To" since they don't feature a "social learning" category.)

If you are concerned about giving out your email addresses (and you should be), I voted last year and heard nary a peep back all year. This is administered by PollDaddy – the same folks who run polls for us from time to time. We trust them or we wouldn’t be asking you to participate.

Thanks for your help. Vote early and vote often! Voting runs until December 15, 2008.

Mashable.com is hosting the 2nd annual Open Web Awards, and we'd like to see College-Cram.com nominated for the Niche Social Networking category. Go ahead and vote here to help us make the cut!

(BTW, there is also the How-To category we could qualify for, so please vote for that one too!)

Mashable Open Web Awards

Increasingly, students are turning to distance learning to supplement or replace their "real world" college education. Lower commuting costs and living expenses can influence this, but often it's just a better fit with busy schedules. Besides, the perception of a degree from an online institution is less of a problem than it used to be.

With so much of a distance learning experience being web-based, it's only natural for distance learners to supplement the "official" textbook with other online learning resources. That's why many distance learning students have turned to College-Cram.com to help them prepare for tests. With hundreds of resources available for Accounting, Algebra, and Chemistry a student can usually find the help they need.

Social learning also makes College-Cram helpful for online study. Each learning community boasts a blog,with individual Cramlets covering key concepts in each chapter. Don't quite understand a topic? Post a comment and get help from others, or pitch in yourself to help out another student. This educational collective makes distance learning easier for all.

With ready access to learning resources, students can't help but find it easier to get better grades in less time.

A new semester has started, but the same old story continues. Textbooks still cost too much, and most cost even more than last year. The number of major textbook publishers has gotten lower, meaning an increasingly smaller hegemony of publishers is dictating what we'll use and how much we'll pay.

On the bright side, many classes across the country are looking to more open-sourced solutions. Professor notes, collections of readings, and online resources (like those we feature here at www.College-Cram.com) are taking the place of traditional textbooks in more and more classrooms. Keep up the good work, everyone!

P.S. Here's a shout out to the latest websites that are finding our resources valuable to their visitors, such as SkyLine High, and those incorporating us into their WebCT/Blackboard courses (like the accounting classes at University of Houston and Chippewa Valley Technical College).

I saw the new Pixar movie Wall-E this past weekend, and it was a visual marvel. I've long since stopped really noticing that these animated movies are animated, because the techniques and tools have progressed so far. (Did you even notice the appearance of actual live non-computer-generated footage?)

From a straight movie perspective, it was ok -- certainly not my favorite Pixar movie. But what it lacked in strong actor presence it made up for with educational value. Here are the top seven things I learned about life from watching Wall-E.

** Warning: Potential Spoiler Alert **

1. Capitalism is bad --  The movie takes place some 700 years after an exodus of humanity from a trashed and poisoned Earth. Presumably, this is the result of the "benign" rule of the BnL corporation. So, the big bad corporation is the cause of the downfall of Earth. (I'm guessing that between the technological requirement of Wall-E and the political requirement of a corporation taking over a united Earth, I'm pegging the exodus at a hundred years or so from now.)
2. Apple is good -- Talk about product placement, way to go Steve Jobs! From the still functioning 800 year old iPod to the Macintosh startup sound when Wall-E reboots, it's nice to see that the rumors of Apple's imminent demise have been (greatly) exagerated.
3. People are sheep -- We let the corporation take over the world, we let (helped?) them trash and poison it, and then we let them talk us into running away from the problem. Then, given the "Shangri-La" environment of the Axiom, we devolved into overweight, glowing screen addicted blobs. (Oh wait, that last part isn't really evolution, now that I think about it...)
4. People are adaptable -- After a seeming lifetime of relative ignorance, the Captain stays up into the night querying the ship's computer (Sigourney Weaver in her finest ship performance since Futurama) about Earth. John and Mary instinctively seize on their new-found freedom once made aware of the "real world" by Wall-E, and sacrificed their own safety to protect a sliding mass of children on the Ledo deck. Seemingly nobody on-ship objects to returning to Earth and starting anew. Yes, people seem to have an inherent attraction to what's fundamentally right and a curiousity about what's around them.
5. Computers are evil -- The autopilot deviously tried squashing concrete fact in order to maintain its hold on power. (Where have I heard that before?) The repair bots tried to "fix" EVA in a move reminiscent of Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest". Hell, EVA tried blowing Wall-E away on several occasions. They just can't be trusted. (Except, of course, for the computer I'm typing this on... heh heh...)
   
6. Robots are good -- EVA and Wall-E were just doing their jobs, but realized that there was a new directive worth striving for. The "broken" bots also pitched in to help them achieve that goal, as did the writhing mass of humanity. Ultimately, the bots tried to do what's best for us.
7. Stuff lasts forever -- Come on, a Rubix Cube, iPod, and Atari 2600 that are still in one piece 800 or more years later? I have a cube that didn't last 5 years in my closet, and who knows where my 2600 is. Still, the idea that our trash is still around hundreds of years later rings true. After all, I've been to New Jersey.

Some of these may seem contradictory, but that's the nature of the future. And of cartoons. So deal with it.

Another semester has come to a close, and with it some (hopefully) better grades.

So what are you doing this summer? If you're like most students, you might benefit from this post I wrote a couple of years ago about how to spend your summer vacation. 

For me, there's no rest for the wicked... We've enjoyed a doubling of usage in each of the past three semesters, and I aim to keep that trend going for the fall. I'm sitting in the local Starbucks right now, enjoying a too-large coffee and thinking of more cool and useful things to do with College-Cram.

Enjoy your summer!

Between wrapping up the spring semester and starting my summer "vacation" plans, I changed my profile page to include links to some of the most popular articles I've written over the years.

In case you hadn't seen them all, here they are:

• Best Ways to Cheat in College
• Seven Keys to Getting Better Grades
• How to Write a Killer Essay
• How to Take Good Notes
• How to Work with Word Problems
- - - - - - - - - - - -
• Seven Keys to Writing a Better Resume
• Seven Keys to Ace Your Next Job Interview
• Secret Behind Textbook Costs
• Finding a Holiday Job
• Giving an Oral Presentation
• How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Enjoy these, there are plenty more where they came from.
 

Pre-calculus students from colleges and high schools can get homework help here from our Pre-calculus resources. Whatever the reason for their difficulties -- bad textbook, missed classes, or whatever -- we have the Cramlets to help pre-calculus students get the homework help they need:

• pre-algebra
• graphs and lines
• functions
• equations and inequalities
• complex numbers
• polynomial
• logarithm
• angle functions
• systems of equations
• matrix algebra
• counting and probability
• conic sections

Try our resources for yourself, and you find that getting better grades in less time isn't that hard at all!