In my university town this weekend, students are moving back into their dorms and apartments. Shortly after settling in, they'll head--many with credit-card-toting parents in tow--to the bookstore to purchase the books for their courses.

How much did you pay for the last book you bought? Was it a paperback novel? In the U.S., if you bought it new and paid retail, you're probably looking at about $12-$15. A guide on how to use specific software or to learn to code in CSS? Maybe $30-$40. Mainstream cookbooks? Usually under $50.

But textbooks? It's easy for students to drop the equivalent of a month's rent on a semester's worth of books, especially if they're studying science, engineering, or art history. It's common for students to pay $100-$150 or more for textbooks in certain disciplines.

So what makes textbooks so expensive? That's up for debate. I've been on both sides of the printing press, so to speak--I worked briefly for a small educational publishing company, and I also was a college or grad student for (too) many years. Here are some of the common factors contributing to textbook costs, according to a brochure (PDF) from the National Association of College Stores:

Cost of developing and printing the book: paper, printing, and editorial costs to the publisher constitute 32.5% of a textbook's cost

The publisher's administrative costs account for 10% of each textbook sale.

Publisher's marketing and promotion costs: Besides standard marketing and promotion tactics, this money pays salaries and commissions for a publisher's field representatives as well as supplies professors' free "desk copies" of books adopted or under consideration.

Publisher's income: 7.1% of the cost of the book goes back to the publisher for future project development, author advances, research costs, and stockholder dividends.

Payment to author: The author receives, on average, 11.7% of a textbook's sale. These royalties recompense the writer for his or her writing and research.

Freight expenses account for 1% of the cost of the textbook.

College bookstore personnel, operating expenses, and income account for 11.4%, 5.9%, and 4.9% of textbook costs, respectively.

Of course, this breakdown explains to which institutions each dollar of a textbook goes, but it doesn't explain why each textbook costs so many dollars. It doesn't take much thought to figure out what some of a publisher's expenses might be--beyond writers, graphic artists, editors, accountants, and sales folks, there are reproduction costs related to image rights as well as printing. And many textbooks are printed in Asia and shipped back on large container ships, and from West Coast ports trucked to distributors around the country--this long journey apparently is still less expensive than printing them in the U.S.

But student groups still charge that textbooks cost far more than their actual worth. You can read about one such campaign at MakeTextbooksAffordable.com. The state PIRGs have banded together to produce a series of reports, the most recent in February 2007. That report, "Exposing the Textbook Industry: How Publishers’ Pricing Tactics Drive Up the Cost of College Textbooks" identified three major areas of concern:

1. Publishers are not adequately disclosing price information to the faculty, who do care about the cost to students and want better information.

2. Publishers need to provide unbundled alternatives to bundled textbooks and disclose the availability of these alternatives.

3. Most professors we surveyed often find new editions unnecessary.

You can download the full report as a PDF.

Over the summer, publishing companies and student groups brought the issue to Congress. Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Lauren Smith reports (subscription required) that at the hearing, publishers' representatives accused faculty of choosing the most expensive offerings instead of the less expensive ones.

The result of publishers' pricing and faculty members' apparent misunderstanding of less expensive alternatives? EmptyNestMom pays $131 for a statistics textbook, and Suzanne pays more than $450 for a semester's worth of used textbooks.

Responding to student concerns, bookstores have sought alternative methods of book distribution or have sought to educate faculty on the cost of "bundling" additional products--CDs, DVDs, workbooks, website access, additional books, and more--with a textbook. Such bundles can't be returned to the bookstore unless the entire bundle is still shrink-wrapped. Other schools are even more innovative. Bardiac's institution, for example, rents textbooks to students. Other bookstores are using theft-prevention and -detection methods in order to cut down on the higher prices they must charge on purchased books to make up for their losses.

Faculty are taking action, too. PZ Myers lets his students use older editions of textbooks so that they can buy used copies of the books. Larry Moran, a textbook author, explains why publishers feel new editions are necessary. Jim Fiore offers other reasons for publishers' constant churning-out of new editions, especially in the sciences.

These new editions make it harder for students to sell back their textbooks at the end of the term, even if they're in pristine condition. As Eileen Alt Powell explains,

It makes sense that college booksellers would get a bad rap. After shelling out $400 to $600 at the start of a semester, many students return to stores after finals, only to be stunned by how little they get for selling books back. An oceanography book that cost me more than $100 four years ago as a freshman fetched all of three bucks. But the buyback prices are largely based on what used-book wholesalers will pay for a book, and those prices are determined by the anticipated demand the following semester, which is low if the book isn't widely used or a new edition is coming out. And when you buy a new book, the average markup at college bookstores is comparable to that of traditional US retailers.

Some campuses offer digital versions of textbooks. These editions come with various restrictions. Depending on the publisher, distributor, and the software that must be downloaded to read the book, a book may have one or more of the following restrictions: can't be copied, can't be printed or has limited printing, expires after a specific period of time, can't be read aloud (by screen readers for the visually impaired). And despite the fact that there's no printing costs related to these books or shipping charges, they're still expensive. I used my university book store's digital book browser and clicked randomly on the digital book for an engineering course. The cost? Ninety bucks.

Author Maya Reynolds offers a summary of other methods for reducing textbook costs to students. (She also points out that textbook prices in the U.S. typically are twice as high as those in England. Tessa Atkinson-Adams's research turned up a different of 20 percent.)

Sometimes the bookstores are at fault with their policies. One Berkeley City College student reports, for example, that

if I buy let’s say a $100 book and return it, still wrapped four days later the bookstore will pay me only $50 for it, then turn around and sell it again for $100 to the next unsuspecting student.

Teachers and other advocates for K-12 education have been considering open-content textbooks. In these posts, Quentin D'Souza asks,

Why has Education taken on so many elements of a competitive business? Is it really necessary to be that competitive that we can’t even share what we are publishing in our schools with other schools? Instead, it is better that we duplicate our efforts - again, and again, and again - and not build on the successes of our peers.

What's your solution? And what have you done to afford textbooks for you, your children, or your students? Sold blood plasma? Gone into debt? Swam with sharks?

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She's relieved she no longer has to buy textbooks, and she's partly to blame for higher textbook prices because as faculty she sometimes gets free desk copies of books. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.