Under normal conditions, getting a new edition of a college textbook to press can be a teeth-clenching process involving tight deadlines, bedeviling details and worrisome costs.
Throw in an unwanted public focus on your particular book’s price and the pressures increase markedly.
That’s the picture that emerges from internal emails exchanged last fall between two Cal State Fullerton faculty leaders and an editor at the world’s largest publishing house.
The emails, obtained by the Register under the California Public Records Act, offer a rare, behind-the-scenes look into the collegiate world’s push to publish, in this case complicated by a swelling controversy.
In October, the Register reported that a Cal State Fullerton associate math professor was formally reprimanded for refusing to assign a $180 required text written by two of his superiors. The instructor, Alain Bourget, opted for two books costing less than half as much that he maintained were of equal or better quality.
The authors of the text he passed over are the math department chairman, Stephen Goode, and vice chairman, Scott Annin. The text is required reading in a large, multi-section sophomore course.
The Register’s report on the reprimand prompted criticism by budget-conscious professors and students across the nation and rekindled a debate about the high cost of college books, as well as the ethics of faculty members profiting from the reading materials assigned to their institution’s students. Also, a state lawmaker has proposed new textbook royalty disclosure requirements for all public college and university employees, which a spokesman for a major faculty group argues may be a counterproductive response.
Simultaneously with the Register’s initial reporting, the emails show, Annin and Goode were quietly completing a fourth-edition update to the text, which had last been reworked about eight years ago.
Updating texts every few years and requiring students to use the new editions has been a recurring criticism of higher-ed teachers and the textbook industry.
Those in the academic publishing industry, including a spokeswoman for Pearson, Goode and Annin’s print house, defend the practice.
“An extensive amount of work and time goes into creating and updating these materials – research, editing, and design are just a few of the activities involved,” said the spokeswoman, Laura Howe, in a prepared statement. “When a new edition is published, we do so with the goal of providing substantive updates that add value to students and enhance their learning experience.”
In an Oct. 24 email to Pearson, Annin noted the sensitivity and difficulty of producing a new edition in the midst of the controversy.
“It is very difficult to focus on working on a new edition of a book when our current work and current book are being closely scrutinized and we are dealing with questions from colleagues and media,” Annin wrote in the email signed by both authors.
“With this in mind, perhaps this affects the thinking with respect to the release date of the new text?” Annin suggested.
A response to that question doesn’t appear in the emails provided by Cal State Fullerton. Such breaks in the correspondence prompted the Register to question whether some emails were missing from an initial batch of more than 370 pages of emails released in November. A majority of those were duplicates. University officials subsequently produced two additional files of emails.
Neither Annin nor Goode responded to multiple requests for interviews.
When asked about exchanges that appear open-ended, such as the one above, Danielle García, an assistant to CSUF’s legal counsel, told the Register no documents were withheld. In the discussion about the book’s release date, “whatever further discussion occurred was verbal in a phone conversation,” said García in an email.
It doesn’t appear the textbook controversy slowed the publication schedule significantly, if at all.
Together, the emails stretch over roughly two years ending in October, about the period it took to produce a new, fourth edition. That edition, which Pearson said was published in December, is not yet available at CSUF, according to the campus bookstore’s website.
The exchanges deal mostly with the plodding, routine matters of producing a new textbook edition, a process that rarely attracts public notice. But they also offered insight to some of the authors’ and publisher’s priorities and worries.
GETTING THE MESSAGE RIGHT
Days after the Register broke the news of Bourget’s reprimand, Annin wrote to William Hoffman, a Pearson editor, about the message being sent to the public and how it was being shaped.
“We’re trying to push back a bit by pointing out that ready access to cheaper alternatives (such as eBooks, rental books and used books) is available,” according to the Oct. 24 email co-signed by the authors from Annin’s email address.
CSUF officials did stress that message in press releases and responses to media inquiries about the Bourget textbook matter.
A used version of the book’s third edition is available at the campus bookstore for $145. A temporary rental of the third edition is priced at $60, the store website shows.
However, many students required to use the text tend to buy hard copies and keep them as reference guides, according to interviews with former students and CSUF instructors.
MAINTAINING CONTROL OF CONTENT
Annin and Goode were surprised to learn from an unnamed math instructor that about 300 of the 3,000 math problems in their book’s previous edition appeared on an online homework website, WebAssign, Annin wrote in an email to Hoffman, the Pearson editor.
The unnamed math instructor was using the site, which can be a time-saver for faculty members because it manages assignments and automatically grades students’ work.
It’s unclear from the emails how the problems made their way to the site.
When Annin and Goode told the math instructor that the pending fourth edition would not have a WebAssign supplement, the instructor indicated he would continue using the previous edition so he could maintain access to the homework website.
“Could this negatively impact the attractiveness of the upcoming 4th edition?” Annin asked Hoffman in an Oct. 8 email.
Hoffman reassured Annin about future sales of the new edition.
“As for the prof that will stick with the old edition, when we stop publishing the old edition of your book it will become problematic for him to get old copies,” Hoffman wrote. “Not at first but sooner or later the old edition becomes too hard to find and then the prof you mentioned will have to change.”
Hoffman could not be reached for a comment.
Howe, the Pearson spokeswoman, said Hoffman is no longer with the company. She declined to comment on the October email exchange about future sales, but said Pearson and WebAssign did not have an agreement related to use of material from the third edition.
WebAssign disputed that. “For this textbook, we worked with the publisher, Pearson, to provide the 300 questions in WebAssign,” said Nancy Enloe, a WebAssign spokeswoman, in an email to the Register.
She also cited language from an agreement between the educational companies showing various services to be provided by WebAssign.
the demands of PUBLISHING
The CSUF emails show the writing, editing and production process involved several individuals, from project managers to fact checkers. Chapter drafts were repeatedly exchanged and the list of seemingly small details, such as choosing font sizes and colors, appeared endless.
At one point, Annin complained to a Pearson representative about having to provide answers to hundreds of math problems when he was “buried in mountains of grading and dozens of scared students taking up a lot of my time as we approach final exams!” The publisher granted the co-authors a deadline extension.
To try to lighten the workload of the fourth edition, the instructors requested $1,500 from the publisher to hire a former award-winning student heading to grad school. Goode and Annin noted they previously were given a $2,500 stipend for a student assistant to help with the solutions manual for the third edition.
It’s unclear from the emails whether Goode and Annin received the requested funds for an assistant to work on the fourth edition.
Aside from the financial figures for assistants, the only other one included in the correspondence released by the university involved royalties received by Annin in the 2014 tax year. After Annin asks Pearson for that amount for tax-filing purposes, someone in the royalty department reports the total for that year was $5,028.51, according to an April 2 email.
Two other emails notify Goode that royalty statements are available for viewing but do not indicate royalty amounts.
Neither instructor has publicly disclosed how much they’ve been paid for writing the textbooks. Department chairs in the Cal State system are not covered by state ethics laws that require public officials to disclose their sources of income.
After the Register published stories on textbook costs and the ethics of faculty profiting from their students, Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, introduced legislation that would require all public college employees to disclose royalties and potential conflicts of interest in annual public filings with the state.
The Cal State system’s Academic Senate is watching the bill and has expressed some concerns, said Senate Chairman Steven Filling.
Filling said Allen’s bill would burden faculty members with excessive paperwork demands, which may deter some textbook authors from producing their own work. He warned this may create a “chilling impact” on academic freedom.
He also noted that academic authors may run into trouble figuring out precisely what to disclose if Allen’s bill becomes law. Publishers issue royalty checks based on total book sales, which typically aren’t broken out by campus, according to Filling’s discussions with roughly two dozen textbook writers.
Instead of enacting a new statewide law, Filling said it would be easier to ensure that individual campuses have proper policies in place to address conflicts of interest.
“A majority of my colleagues don’t believe this is a problem worthy of the … likely cost of trying to solve it in this way,” said Filling, an accounting professor at Cal State Stanislaus.
This semester, CSUF students taking the sophomore math course – Introduction to Linear Algebra and Differential Equations – have been assigned the third edition of the Goode-Annin text. University spokeswoman Paula Selleck said it’s too soon to know whether the latest edition will be available at the campus bookstore by next semester because department book orders won’t be finalized until later this spring.
The suggested retail price for the fourth edition, according to Pearson’s website, is $178.67. The company also recently posted suggested prices for other versions of the textbook: $82.99 for an online subscription, and $116.67 for an “a la carte” version.
Contact the writer: lleung@ocregister.com or 714-796-4976 Twitter @LilyShumLeung
