Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks, which is 20% of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college!  Publishers keep student paying top dollar with new editions, costly bundles and outrageous price tags.

We think that textbooks should be reasonably priced and that used books should be easy to buy and sell.  We also think that students should have more cost-saving options, including e-books, paperbacks and unbundled copies.

Around the country, students and professors are fighting back. Students are trading books with each other at online book swaps like CampusBookswap.org. Professors are pushing back against publishers until books are cheaper, unbundled and on the market for longer. There are even new laws curbing some of the worst publisher practices. We are also finding better solutions.  Most importantly open textbooks, which are licensed to be free online and affordable in print.  Dozens of these books already exist, and more are on the way. There is even a new for-profit open textbook publisher. Open textbooks mean competition, and that could send a message publishers can't ignore - make textbooks affordable!

This semester, we are really turning up the heat on publishers by becoming a full-on open textbook marketing force. We're telling thousands of professors about open textbooks this spring through email, brochures and face-to-face meetings. Most of them will decide next year's books by the end of the term, so we'll see just how expensive textbooks stack up to a free alternative!