With the start of college classes just around the corner, Hawai'i students are beginning the search for the best bargains on textbooks to offset what can add up to as much as a $900 expense each semester.

High fuel prices that have added to shipping costs, plus new "custom" books that are harder to sell, are adding to students' frustrations and have some professors trying other methods that are easier on students' wallets.

"The costs of textbooks are outrageous," said Jaime Sohn, president of the Associated Students of the University of Hawai'i, the school's undergraduate student government organization.

Sohn, a senior accounting major, paid $600 each semester for books as a freshman and now pays $800 a semester for a combination of used and new texts.

The average student spends about $900 on books a year, according to a 2005 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The study also found that textbook prices rose at twice the rate of inflation, and prices nearly tripled between December 1986 and December 2004.

In recent years, 34 state legislatures have introduced or passed bills seeking to curb rising textbook costs. A bill pending in Congress would force publishers to reveal their prices to professors and would require these companies to "unbundle" textbook packages that now include supplements like CDs. These add-ons often drive up the cost of the book, and many say they are only marginally useful.

SEARCH ONLINE

Many students have turned to online sites such as Amazon.com or Half.com for books in recent years.

There are still deals to be found online, but publishers have come up with new ways to suppress a large-scale market for used books, for example offering textbooks customized by professors for specific classes that are often harder to sell back.

The University of Hawai'i Bookstore, for example, sells "The Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater: A Global Perspective" for $110.55 new. Students searching for the ISBN on Amazon.com, however, will not find the book, as it is a custom edition created by Pearson Custom Publishing for the university's Theater 101 class and includes a paperback supplement titled "Evaluating a Performance."

Ken Hashimoto, a sophomore biology major, took that class last semester. When he took the book back to the store at the end of the semester, the store wouldn't take it — the course required students to purchase a new book and supplement, he said.

"After working here, I see how often that happens," said Hashimoto, who was stacking textbooks on the shelves at the UH bookstore on Friday. "It's just a real bummer."

Many students also try networking — trading books with others who are taking the same classes, he said. Many schools' online student community sites, as well as social networking sites such as Facebook, provide a way for students to buy and sell books from their peers.

CUSTOMIZED BOOKS

Bookstore officials point out that customized books, which allow professors to select the content, can often be lower-priced alternatives to regular textbooks.

The university bookstore sells two versions of "West's Business Law" — the hardcover edition which sells new for $203.30 and a softcover customized version that includes a copy of the Hawai'i state Constitution instead of chapters on "Insurance" and "Professional Liability and Accountability" and sells for $125. The original and customized versions sell for $154.55 and $95 used, respectively, and students can purchase used versions of the customized book for this semester.

SHIPPING INCREASE

Rising fuel prices have also affected the cost of shipping books to Hawai'i.

"It's getting to be factored in more often, noticeably," said Chaminade bookstore manager Evangeline Calbero. "If we were to have ordered the same book a month ago, it would have been from $1.50 to $2 less. It keeps adding on as the weeks go along."

The University of Hawai'i bookstore is absorbing the freight cost, but at Chaminade, the increased costs have been passed on to students, Calbero said.

Calbero said she feels for students who must shell out between $400 and $600 a semester for books and get less than half that amount back at the end of the year.

But, "if we can't move it, we're going to have to eat it," she said.

LOW-COST ALTERNATIVES

Some bookstores now offer low-cost alternatives, like electronic books or "e-books," and after hearing students complain, some professors are giving up textbooks for what they say are better methods of teaching.

After rejecting several textbooks — all in the $80 to $100 range — for his biology class for nonmajors, professor Alan Teramura recently traded textbooks for PowerPoint presentations.

"In the sciences in general, I think textbooks are fairly expensive," Teramura, interim dean of the college of natural sciences, said this week. "There's been a lot of pushback by the students, and I think some of the professors sympathize with (them)."

PowerPoint allows him to incorporate current events into lectures.

"When book publishers come to talk to me, I show them my PowerPoints and the first thing they say is, 'why don't you write a textbook?' " he said.

Flat World Knowledge, which offers free e-books and supplements that students can customize, is launching a pilot program at 15 universities across the United States this fall. The company has been talking with Brigham Young University in Hawai'i about possibly making the service available there, founder Eric Frank said by phone this week from Nyack, N.Y.

"I think it's actually kind of this whole boisterous mix of conditions coming together and causing tremendous pressure on the textbook industry to change," Frank said.

"Textbooks got priced beyond where students placed value on them," he said. "Students don't want to pay for just anything. They are consumers like anyone else."

Hawai'i lawmakers took aim at expensive books during the 2008 session with two bills, one that would have established a textbook lending library program for students in need at the University of Hawai'i, and one that directed the Department of Education to study the feasibility of converting hard cover textbooks to e-books for use in public schools. Neither measure passed.

Sohn, the ASUH president, said he wants the student government to press state lawmakers to take up the issue again next year.

"It's something that every student deals with and something we definitely should look into," he said.