Publishers market textbooks and other educational materials to professors in colleges and universities throughout the country. In most cases, professors select the materials that will be used for their courses. Professors generally select textbooks to serve as the primary teaching material for a course. Textbooks provide the core written material for a course, serve as foundation for the professor's overall lesson plan, and set forth the framework for class discussions. Professors will choose among textbooks that can provide this core content and structure.
Students then buy the textbook selected by their professor, typically at college bookstores.
Publishers sometimes offer professors free ancillary educational materials, such as a teacher's edition of the textbook, audio-visual teaching tools such as color overhead slides, and copies of the textbook for teaching assistants, as inducements to choose a particular publisher's textbook. In addition, the textbooks that students buy sometimes are part of a discounted package that includes further ancillary educational materials such as CD-ROMs and study guides. For the thirty-two courses identified in Exhibit A, college textbooks, along with ancillary educational materials, are used as the primary teaching materials. Professors choosing a textbook and ancillary educational materials for any of the courses listed in Exhibit A would not turn to any alternative product in sufficient numbers to defeat a small but significant increase in the price of the textbook available for that course or a Page 9 small but significant decrease in the ancillary materials sold or included with the textbook. In addition, students purchasing a textbook for any of the courses listed in Exhibit A would not turn to any alternative product in sufficient numbers to defeat a small but significant increase in the price of the textbook or a small but significant decrease in the ancillary materials sold or included with the textbook.