College years are filled with an endless number of bills and fees, but thanks to a new campaign, there soon may be a solution to at least one of those high costs -- textbooks.

A new movement called Campus Campaign has been created to unite Pennsylvania college students and their families to take action against the high costs of textbooks. The student activism group is petitioning to create a law making professors' textbook lists public information, said campaign manager Jennifer Messinger.

"If the bill is passed, it will allow all businesses interested in selling textbooks off-campus or on the Internet to get book lists from professors without any hassle, which would create more competition in the market and definitely lower prices," Messinger said.

A recent study conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Education found that there are nearly 590,000 college students in Pennsylvania, and with each college student spending between $773 to $870 yearly, Pennsylvania families spend close to $472 million a year on textbooks.

Messinger said that if Campus Campaign achieves its goal, the yearly costs of textbooks would be reduced by at least 10 to 40 percent for Pennsylvania college students and their families.

Campus Campaign has a newly created Web site, www.campuscampaign.org, which it is using as a place where students can sign the petition to make book lists public, blog about the issue and find the latest articles about textbook legislation.

Messinger said at most Pennsylvania colleges, the textbook business is a monopoly because books are available only at on-campus bookstores, where students are likely to pay higher prices. "Most of the on-campus bookstores are afraid of competition, so they attempt to block stores from obtaining textbook lists issued by professors, which makes it impossible for any competing bookstores to survive," she said.

However, Penn State is an exception to the majority of colleges and universities in Pennsylvania because there are both on- and off-campus bookstores available to students.

Thad Johnson, manager of the Student Book Store, 330 E. College Ave., said that at Penn State, off-campus bookstores are given full access to professors' book lists. Nevertheless, Johnson said House Bill 1842, a new bill to get publishers to make only unbundled textbooks, would be a great improvement. "We already try to separate all of the bundled textbook packages that we can so students can pick the books they want and not be forced to buy the expensive bundles from the publishers," Johnson said. "But if this bill is passed, it would make everything a lot easier."

However, Tom Fankhauser, assistant manager of the Penn State Bookstore in the HUB-Robeson Center, did not agree that the bill would change the prices of textbooks for students.

"The prices of books and workbooks probably won't change if this bill is passed, but it might make more used books available for students," he said.

Matthew Alford, general manager of Got Used Bookstore, 206 E. College Ave., also said he has never had a problem getting professors' book lists from Penn State, and he agrees Bill 1842 would be a significant change. "Most students don't realize that when a professor requires a bundled package for their class, it is usually because they have already sat down with the publishers and worked out a deal to receive 15 percent of the profits made on the packages," he said.