The textbook I was going to use is out of print. Now what?

November 8, 2007 5:15 AM

The book I was planning to use for a course this spring just went out of print. What are my options?

I was planning on using Roberts & Tesman's _Applied Combinatorics_ for a course I'm teaching this coming Spring (as in, two months from now). It turns out that the book went out of print in August, so the publisher doesn't have any to send to the bookstore.

In addition to (a) using a different book, or (b) asking students to buy it used and hoping that they can all find copies in reasonable condition, are there any other options I can consider? For example, am I allowed to xerox the book for the students, since it's out of print? Is it likely I could get the authors to send me a .pdf of the text?

(Some other publishers, such as Wiley, will print books on demand, but apparently Prentice-Hall/Pearson doesn't do this. I e-mailed the book rep from the publishers assigned to my school, and she basically said to use Amazon. But I'm a little uncomfortable with forcing them to do that (although they're all bright kids, so it probably wouldn't be an issue).)

posted by leahwrenn to Writing & Language (17 answers total)

I'm not a lawyer, but I do work in academia, and academic fair use rarely covers photocopying an entire text (especially in these hyperparanoid times; my school drags its feet even when things are clearly fair use). You could use portions of it, though.
posted by BackwardsCity at 5:18 AM on November 8, 2007

If you have an idea of how many students there will be, can you start buying them off Amazon/wherever now, and then sell them to the students yourself at the beginning of semester?
posted by jacalata at 5:41 AM on November 8, 2007

Yeah, how many students are there?
posted by cashman at 5:47 AM on November 8, 2007

Last year a professor of mine was in a similar situation, and decided to assign the out of print book and hope that everyone could secure it through half.com or amazon. Within a week there was a bid war, and sellers with multiple copies jacked up the prices, leading some of us to pay upwards of $100. If I were you, I'd buy as many copies as I could at a reasonable price and put them on reserve at the library- that way students can have access and photocopy them if they like, without making you or the school liable.
posted by farishta at 5:49 AM on November 8, 2007

If you ask the publisher's permission, then maybe you'll be able to photocopy the book and then sell it through the campus bookstore so that the publisher still gets paid.
posted by fallenposters at 6:20 AM on November 8, 2007

See if you can contact the publisher or even the authors, as they would no doubt be thrilled to do something to help keep their book alive.
posted by cal71 at 7:37 AM on November 8, 2007

Rent it from chegg.com.
posted by rglass at 7:40 AM on November 8, 2007

Or go to www.copyright.com, look up the book by its ISBN [0130796034] and see what your permissions options are for the portions you want to use.
posted by cal71 at 7:41 AM on November 8, 2007

As someone who used to be adjunct faculty, I join the chorus of people begging you not to make the out-of-print book required and pray. As others have said: put as many copies as you can find on reserve in the library; see if you can get permission to self-publish a short run. Frankly, I think your best bet is to use another textbook and if there are particularly important sections (3-10 pages), you can copy and distribute those.
posted by ilsa at 7:58 AM on November 8, 2007

Response by poster: I'm anticipating no more than 25 students.

www.copyright.com is an interesting resource. It doesn't have a whole lot of options for me, unfortunately (at least not without further inquiry).

farishta, how many students were in your class? Could the resellers just tell that lots of students wanted to buy the books (and so all of a sudden they raised their prices)? It does look like there are enough books out there for all of my students, if the information from the sellers at Amazon and AbeBooks is reliable.

I can't afford to buy lots of copies now, even if I were to get reimbursed later. It still costs mostly upwards of $70.
posted by leahwrenn at 8:04 AM on November 8, 2007

One of my professors got permission to reproduce a book as one of those bound packets you can buy at a college bookstore. Most packets are fairly cheap, but these were pretty expensive (more expensive than the cost of the book when the book was in print). So, that's an option.

He also assigned another book that was out of print hoping we could all get it used. I was able to find a copy, but I shared it with 2 other students in the class. It wasn't a great solution, but. it was just one book of a few assigned for the course. If it's the only text you will be using, I don't think you should go this route.
posted by bluefly at 8:30 AM on November 8, 2007

Ask your bookstore manager to call other bookstores and secure any available copies. If you can't guarantee enough copies for your students, then don't use it. It's unfair to your students to require something that is unavailable to them.
posted by 26.2 at 9:10 AM on November 8, 2007

One of my professor's had this happen and contacted the author directly. The author had several boxes of the book. Between that and rounding up copies, he was able to get enough copies for the class. This was a class of 50 ppl though. We each "bought" a book from him, in the form of a check that would be returned to us on return of the book. This way, he would have copies for the next class as well.
posted by Mozzie at 9:35 AM on November 8, 2007

I don't know the rules on this, but I took a course in undergrad (Intro to Algebraic Curves) that used an out of print book, and the professor somehow got permission to photocopy the entire book and sell it through the campus copy center as a set of regular coursenotes. Perhaps since it's out of print, you could find some sort of loophole like that.
posted by number9dream at 10:11 AM on November 8, 2007

I used to work for one of those "campus copy centers" (we liked to call ourselves "Custom Publishers of Course Readers" or something). Basically you can outsource the job to them and let them take care of securing copyrights from the author or publisher, then they'll photocopy it for you, bind it, and sell it directly to the students for the cost of copyright plus cost of photocopying. That's one way to go, and the company I worked for did that on a semi-regular basis with out of print books. The copyright cost will vary depending on who holds the copyright and how long the book is, but hopefully if you go through a good vendor they'll be able to negotiate it down for you to something reasonably close to the book's original cost.
posted by booknerd at 10:38 AM on November 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

I hope I don't get slammed for this but there's always the option of making PDFs out of each chapter and posting them on Blackboard, or your school's courseware alternative. This isn't necessarily legal-- okay, it's not legal-- but it's done all the time. I've also taken classes where the professor xeroxed the entire book and put it on reserve, and we each took it out and xeroxed it ourselves.

Going through a campus copy center is fine if you think it's OK for your (presumably broke) students to pay $100+ for a packet of photocopies.
posted by alicetiara at 2:41 PM on November 8, 2007

Until recently I was a text-buyer for one of the larger Uni's in Australia.

Ring Pearsons and speak with the local Higher Education rep. I have been able to get out-of-print books for some lecturers only becuase the publisher cleaned out their warehouse and managed to scrounge up the last few copies. I've also had publishers supply photocopies of the required chapters if the whole book wasn't needed. The publisher's reps get paid on commission and a good rep will go through a lot to get what you need.

If that doesn't work, try contacting the author. They may be able to assist (after all, it's their work thats going to be cited - it may lead to them getting the book reprinted).

AND if that doesn't work, I think you should feel no guilt about copying the heck out of the book.
posted by ninazer0 at 4:36 PM on November 8, 2007