The National Association of College Stores is investigating the Oklahoma, Harvard and Yale University presses for charging higher rates to bookstores that sell textbooks than those that sell books appealing to the general public.
The investigation, however, is unlikely to yield any concrete savings for students at the College, according to representatives from the Dartmouth Bookstore and Wheelock Books.
All publishers give bookstores a discount of approximately 40 percent on general interest books whereas textbooks receive a 20 percent discount, according to an article in the Jan. 17th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Most culprits of the unequal discounting policy are smaller and medium-sized publishers.
The Dartmouth Bookstore's general manager Dave Cioffi said publishers give bookstores less of a discount on textbooks because they expect the stores to return between 30 and 40 percent of the titles purchased.
Cioffi said the Dartmouth Bookstore usually gets a 40 percent discount on general interest texts, but only a 20 percent discount on titles publishers assume will be used as textbooks.
He said even if the NACS is successful in abolishing dual pricing for textbooks, students who purchase their books at the Dartmouth Bookstore will continue to pay the same prices.
Cioffi said the Dartmouth Bookstore does not justify charging students more for textbooks because the store receives less of a discount on classroom texts than on general titles.
He said students would not purchase their books at the Dartmouth Bookstore if the store were charging inappropriately high prices.
"Our clientele is pretty smart," Cioffi said.
Wheelock Books, unlike the Dartmouth Bookstore, deals exlusively in books that students will use as classroom texts and is also subject to the more expensive charges from the publishers.
Although Wheelock Books may pay more than general interest bookstores, it is not an excuse to charge students higher prices, said Wheelock Books' owner Whit Spaulding '89.
The NACS's Director of Public Relations Jerry Buchs said "dual pricing" has been an issue in the college store industry for at least the past 50 years.
He said the practice of charging textbook bookstores higher rates on their purchases violates anti-trust laws.
The NACS's legal council has contacted the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department to see if they would be interested in pursuing the investigation, Buchs said.
The Dartmouth Bookstore and Wheelock Books are both members of the National Association of College Stores.
Cioffi said The Dartmouth Bookstore would back the NACS's investigation, but Spaulding said he was not aware of the "dual pricing" issue and said the NACS is concerned mainly with representing larger stores.
Buchs said the NACS's board of trustees will meet in April to decide whether to proceed with litigation, but several publishers have already agreed to change their policies because of the investigation.
But Oklahoma University Press Publicity Manager Lennie Draper said she is not aware of the investigation and does not think anything is wrong with giving some stores a smaller discount on textbooks.
