HB 431 Summary

• Prohibits employees at public two-year and four-year institutions of higher education from receiving payments, loans, services, or other inducements from publishers in exchange for requiring specific textbooks, with exceptions for sample copies and royalties from the employee's own work.

• Requires institutions to post lists of required or assigned textbooks in a standard format including ISBN numbers on their websites, central locations, and bookstores as soon as instructors or departments identify the textbooks.

• Mandates institutions implement cost-saving policies including confirming faculty intent to use all items in bundled packages, having faculty acknowledge retail prices, encouraging use of previous textbook editions when substantively similar, and ensuring textbooks are available to students unable to afford them.

• Establishes an 11-member College Textbook Review Board (6 appointed by Alabama Commission on Higher Education, 5 by Chancellor of Postsecondary Education) with two-year terms to serve as interface between publishers and bookstores and develop textbook cost control policies.

• Directs the review board to establish rules by October 1, 2010 that create cost control policies, require publishers to justify new editions, set maximum price increase limits on reprinted editions, and mandate publishers mail marketing materials to instructors.