A cheat sheet for buying textbooks

After spending hundred of shekels on the backpack, the notebook, the pencil case and the exercise books, it's time to whip out the textbook list the kids brought home from school. The textbook budget for first grade stands at NIS 250, a sum liable to reach NIS 800 in high school classes. In contrast to the competitive pricing found in the popular book market, when it comes to textbooks the stores get miniscule discounts from publishers and accordingly do not offer keen prices. The result? Differences between textbook prices at various retail outlets are generally microscopic.

	Elementary school students.
	Photo by: Alon Ron

A survey conducted by TheMarker, based on a few student lists, showed tiny price differentials. For instance, from one child's list for third grade the difference between the highest and lowest offers is NIS 17.50. In the absence of substantial differences in price, the choice of retail outlet really comes down to convenience. Chains with tens of stores, such as Junction Books, Office Depot and Toy Village allow you to make your purchase in several ways - you can fax or e-mail the list and collect the books from a branch near you, or order via the Toy Village and Office Depot websites.

With online sites, the convenience lies in page upload speed, reliability of the server, user-friendly interface, speed of search engine and its ability to handle long lists.

The cheapest sites found are Books4U by Rachgold publishers and Bookme by Sefer Lekol Marketing and Distribution. That said, despite the quick search engines built into these sites, they are still a bit cumbersome. On Bookme, for example, you cannot view the running total of selected items as you add them to your order. On Books4U we occasionally encountered an unusually lengthy loading time while adding items to the cart, and were asked to change the number 0 to 1 in order to confirm having selected an item; we also had trouble removing items from the cart when going to check out.

The Sefernet site run by Office Depot and Bookmarket run by Toy Village offer search engines that include pre-entered book lists arranged according to school. But when the lists are not available on the site, which can happen, the Bookmarket site requires each book to be searched for separately.

The website that stands out in terms of ease of use is Office Depot's Sefernet. Type in a few letters or key words from a textbook title and a convenient list of current titles comes on screen. Directions are simple and easy to use, and at every stage of your purchase a running total for your cart is displayed. If you type in an incorrect title a brief error message comes up, which can get irritating, but this can be overlooked given the short time it took us to put together complete textbook lists. The site also gives you the ability to prepare the list, send it by e-mail and recreate it at any time. Another advantage is the book-wrapping service offered by the site; though it should be noted that this service is added automatically, meaning if you don't want it you have to answer "no" to a question automatically ticked affirmative.

Used books if youhave the patience

If you want to cut costs at any cost, another option is used books. At Junction Books you can buy used books at a 34% discount, and on the Bookmarket website they are 50% off. But it's difficult putting together the entire list given how many textbooks have been updated and the limited supply since kids do not generally take great care of their books.

An interesting approach - only for the most patient among us - is to join one of the sites offering textbooks for sale and purchase among its users. Such sites include Shalgon, Book-trade and Schoolbook. The problem with this selection, though, is the lack of quality control. While bookstores are careful to only offer textbooks for the current school year, in accordance with your lists, if you buy from private sellers you have no such guarantee.

Likewise, it is usually up to the buyer to pick up the item, so you're likely to find yourself glued to your GPS. That said, one should not discount this option. Used books are offered for token prices and we found discounts of up to 80%.

How about a loaner?

Another way to cut costs is the textbook loaning project - an enterprise dedicated to reducing the cost of textbooks via buying by bulk through the school. Around 1,200 school are currently involved in the project, which is restricted to grades 1 to 9. The school is granted an initial budget from the Ministry of Education to buy textbooks and at the end of each school year the pupils leave their books in school.

These students pay an annual fee under the auspices of the Education Ministry - this year it runs to NIS 280 - and this is meant to cover all the costs of replacing missing books, buying new editions and the wear and tear that comes about from the books being used. The minute a school strictly adheres to the requirements and insists students bind their books and look after them, the returned books not only save parents money, but the process is liable to be profitable for the school, as the pupils pay the fee each year but the books last longer.

The recently revised Textbook Lending Law now requires the agreement of 60% of the parents to implement the project in a school, rather than the 90% required according to the law as it stood in 2000. The Ministry of Education responded that it had tripled the project's budget for the coming school year, from NIS 1.9 million to NIS 5.5 million.

Failing supervision

Over the years, laws, regulations and directions have been drafted to help reduce the cost of textbooks. The Ministry of Education publishes an annual list of approved textbooks and their maximum price, and also requires schools to attach the price lists to the lists of books. Likewise, the schools are not permitted to select a new textbook for at least five years and as of the coming school year parents are not required to purchase their children's work books.

In practice, it appears that supervision is lax, no real means of enforcement are in place and directions are not followed on the ground, according to the findings of the Knesset Research and Information Center published last February.

These mirrored TheMarker's findings in a survey of random textbook lists, in which we found unapproved textbooks and work books, and in some cases no book prices.

The Ministry of Education issued the following response regarding the enforcement of approved book lists: "Over the course of the most recent school year, we took extensive steps to enforce the directions in place in the area of textbooks. We located 750 textbooks which had not been approved or updated. The ministry removed them from general use."

Regarding changes in textbooks used, the ministry claims that its inspectors monitor this through regularly consulting school's book lists. But how is it that the ministry checks the lists and the date on which textbooks were last changed on a regular basis without discovering the plethora of unapproved books littering the lists?

Price discrepancies

The findings of the Research and Information Center also note the lack of any active enforcement concerning the maximum retail price. Over the course of our comparison, we found prices routinely set NIS 0.20 higher than those published by the Ministry of Education for a range of books on Office Depot's Sefernet site. It must be noted, however, that when the discrepancy was pointed out, the prices were changed to match those published on the Ministry of Education's website.

Office Depot issued the following response: "The discrepancy found by TheMarker in terms of the prices on the site versus Ministry of Education prices stems from changes in VAT rates in the past year. We received the prices from the Ministry of Education and the Book Publishers' Association of Israel."

A investigation by the Israel Consumer Council - the findings of which were delivered to the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee - found that in all the book stores surveyed in spot checks, there was at least one textbook sold at a higher price than the maximum price set by the Ministry of Education. And indeed, we did not have any difficulty in finding such price differences ourselves. The maximum price of the book "Chapters in Ecology," for example, according to the Education Ministry's price list is NIS 60, while at each of the stores we checked it was listed at a price 7 to 10 shekels higher.

When we asked the Ministry of Education for a response, we were referred to the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. The latter responded that "textbook supervision is carried out or should be carried out solely by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor does not enforce the price of textbooks."

One way or another, we have yet to discern the source of the problem - in the Ministry of Education, which fails to update the lists of approved textbooks and their prices, or in wanton price hikes, which strangely seems to afflict the same textbooks in every store.