In response to many opinions that textbook production brings high profits, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Tung said that the textbook production process of the VietnamEducation Publishing House must go through 8 steps: Building a team of authors; building a model including a general outline, detailed outline, compiling sample lessons, teaching experiments; compiling rough drafts, and providing comments to adjust the author's drafts.

Next is the design editing stage; internal review of expert review opinions; 2 rounds of national review; book introduction; training teachers on book use and textbook supply.

“Therefore, there are many costs in the price of textbooks. Vietnam Education Publishing House and other textbook publishing units must declare prices based on the costs that make up the price and must be approved by the Price Management Department - Ministry of Finance . Thus, in reality, there is almost no or very little profit from textbooks. Vietnam Education Publishing House makes a profit from other books such as: supplementary books, reference books, etc.

But public opinion, even those in the industry, do not know this, and keep thinking that the Vietnam Education Publishing House has a revenue of 3,000 billion VND and a profit of 300 billion VND from textbooks. If making textbooks were that easy and profitable, there would probably be many publishing houses and private units participating in compiling and publishing textbooks," said Mr. Tung.

Mr. Tung added that textbook prices are made up of many factors, focusing on 5 factors: Cost of organizing the manuscript, royalty costs, production costs: including paper and printing costs, circulation costs (also known as distribution costs); financial costs (also known as interest).

"The cost of organizing the manuscript of a set of textbooks is up to thousands of billions of VND; the current royalties are calculated by class period (regardless of the number of books printed). The total royalties of the two textbook sets "Connecting knowledge with life" and "Creative horizon" of the Vietnam Education Publishing House are also up to nearly 70 billion VND annually. In addition, the production costs are also up to thousands of billions of VND (including paper and printing costs), while the current production costs of the Publishing House are entirely based on bank loans. The costs for circulation and distribution are also very large," said Mr. Tung.

According to Mr. Tung, in reality, the organization of compiling, printing and distributing textbooks is not the exclusive right of the Vietnam Education Publishing House. Currently, there are 7 publishing houses licensed by the Ministry of Information and Communications to publish textbooks, but only 6 publishers participate because publishing textbooks is not easy.

According to Mr. Tung, before the new school year 2024-2025, in order to reduce textbook prices by 10% or more for each set to support consumers, Vietnam Education Publishing House has reviewed the costs that make up the price, including the two most important items: manuscript organization costs and circulation costs.

“Regarding the cost of organizing the manuscript, the Publishing House has updated the actual output. This output is larger than the expected number, so the cost of organizing the manuscript allocated to each book copy has decreased. We also continue to reduce the cost of circulation to be able to reduce the book cover price,” said Mr. Tung.

Accordingly, the new cover prices of reprinted textbooks applied from the 2024-2025 school year have been adjusted down compared to previous years. Specifically, the cover price of the textbook series Connecting Knowledge with Life has decreased by 9.6%, and the cover price of the textbook series Creative Horizon has decreased by 11.2%.

For textbook prices for grades 5, 9, and 12 (first year of publication), Vietnam Education Publishing House has established prices based on the reduced price structure of reprinted textbooks.

Textbooks are discounted an average of 10-15%

On June 1, at a Government meeting, Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son reported on the supply situation and price reduction of textbooks for the 2024-2025 school year.

Latest instructions from the Ministry of Education and Training on tuition fees and textbook prices

The Ministry of Education and Training has just issued new instructions on tuition fees and textbook prices for the 2024-2025 school year, emphasizing the need to prevent overcharging at the beginning of the year.

Vietnam Education Publishing House reduces textbook prices

A representative of Vietnam Education Publishing House said that textbook prices will be reduced for the 2024-2025 school year.