An Associated Students of Madison committee dedicated to reducing how much students spend on textbooks met for the first time Friday afternoon.
The ASM Affordable Textbook Committee is made up of students and faculty working to find, promote and apply alternatives to spending an excessive amount of money on textbooks.
Members said one of the reasons textbooks are so costly is because publishers take so much money for themselves. However, this can make publishers flexible about the prices they charge for books.
The committee said if professors are more educated about the books they decide to use, textbook prices would begin to drop.
For instance, when publishers approach professors to use their books for a course, if professors demand they lower the price of the book the publisher will likely agree to do so.
The committee also said books are typically cheaper when bought through private authors rather than publishers, and if professors use books through these authors textbook prices would decrease substantially.
ASM representative Jonah Zinn said the committee made good progress in its first meeting.
""We talked about some really good possible strategies for the semester and set some goals and really identified the problem,"" Zinn said. ""We discussed how the committee is going to look and hopefully it'll be beneficial to students.""
Members decided the entire committee will meet about twice per semester and individual subcommittees would meet more often.
The committee is a Shared Governance Committee through the Associated Students of Madison's former Academic Affairs Committee.
