<p>Loyola's student newspaper "The Phoenix" recently printed a rather long information- packed article on the costs of new and used textbook, university bookstore sales and profits, and the limited e-textbook market.</p>
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Parents say to hit the books, but how much do those books hit the bank? It's the start of second semester and that primarily means scrounging for "cheap" textbooks...</p>
<p>According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress to investigate how the federal government spends tax dollars, textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of general inflation since 1986...</p>
<p>Based on the results of the National Association of College Stores (NACS) the 2005- '06 academic year resulted in an average cost of textbooks and supplies per student falling in the range of $800-$900 per year. This does not even include the cost of labs that many students in the Loyola community have to deal with if they are pre-med/ pre-professional.</p>
<p>The students have to pay for frequent revisions of textbooks, production costs, bundling and much more... </p>
<p>Students purchase the books because the professor, department or state made that exact version a requirement for the class. One of the worst possible situations for students is to purchase an expensive book and then find out they will only be using it very briefly. Many classes have thick textbooks where it would be impossible to cover all of the material over the course of a semester. Generally, the GAO credits the current additional costs partly to supplements such as CD-ROMs that often accompany a book...</p>
<p>Another up-and-coming option is Freeload Press Inc., which is a company that started up in 2004 with the idea of placing commercial advertisements in textbooks to defray the costs which also allows them to provide the text in a low-cost print version or in a free e-book form. This is made possible through advertisements, which are promised to be put only at "natural breaks" in the text and certain ads can be vetoed. Currently, they are being used at more than 100 colleges but have a very limited library and their texts are solely for business, math and computer applications courses.
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