BERKELEY - The physics textbook costs $130 in the UC Berkeley campus bookstore, and $70 used. Shocked at the cost, Misha Leybovich, then a freshman, found a friend willing to sell it for $30. Leybovich now holds a textbook swap on Sproul Plaza at the start of every semester to circumvent rising prices at the bookstore.

"We can't afford what we're being asked to pay," he said. "I wish I didn't have to put on this event. ... The textbooks are way too expensive."

Instructors aren't happy about it either.

More than 100 UC and California State University professors around the state signed an April 6 letter along with 400 others nationwide calling on Thomson Learning, a giant in the textbook industry, to lower prices and stop releasing new editions every few years.

UC students shelled out an average of $898 in 2003-04 for textbooks, a survey by the California Student Public Interest Research Group found. The cost is increasingly onerous for students paying ever higher fees.

Cheaper textbooks would make Berkeley sophomore Linda Salinas happy. She spends roughly $800 a year on books. She has to work 17 hours a week and so far owes $7,000 in loans even though she has financial aid.

"I can only imagine how it affects the students who want to come here ... (because) already they feel they can't afford it."

Two state Assembly members have introduced bills to try to ease textbook prices.

"Fee hikes, cuts to financial aid and excessive profit-taking by textbook publishers are driving students out of college entirely," Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, said in a statement.

Thomson Learning calls the CalPIRG survey unscientific and biased. Officials there agree textbooks are expensive, but they argue college students are a small market and that graphics and other illustrations cost a lot.

"They've turned on this huge misinformation machine, and it's upsetting," said Jessica Dee Rohm, vice president for communications at Thomson Learning.

The company recently issued a select line of smaller textbooks with fewer graphics priced at least 25 percent below typical hardcover texts, she noted.

UC's Office of the President has looked into the issue and found the average student spent 24 percent more on textbooks in 2002-03 than in 1996-97.

UC's nine campus bookstores, which are university-owned and run except UC Berkeley's, are researching whether they can negotiate better deals with publishers by buying their books together.

"Publishers through the past decade of mergers and acquisitions have become large international companies -- multi-billion-dollar companies," said John Turk, bookstore director at UC San Diego. "Most college and university bookstores are small, locally operated bookstores. ... We're trying to gain more clout with these publishers."

CalPIRG researchers surveyed 521 UC students and 156 faculty members in California and Oregon. It also examined the 33 books assigned most often by UC professors. The survey found that half the textbooks come bundled with additional materials such as workbooks and CD-ROMs, which can significantly increase their price. A majority of faculty members said they rarely asked students to use those extras.

CalPIRG researchers also examined the frequency with which publishers issue new additions.

Professors constantly need fresh applications of material, maintains Judith Platt, spokeswoman for the Association of American Publishers.

"They are focusing anger on publishers because we're an easy target," she said. "There are enormous problems nationwide in higher education, and publishers are part of the answer, not part of the problem."

Faculty members disagree the new editions are always necessary.

"It's like putting a different color paint job on a car, it doesn't make that much difference," said UC Berkeley mathematics professor Rob Kirby, echoing colleagues. "We would prefer they keep the same edition."

The letter to Thomson Learning CEO Ronald Schlosser, written by CalPIRG and signed by Kirby and other faculty members, complained in particular about the textbook "Calculus: Early Transcendentals, Edition Five." Edition four had been on the market just three years.

Thomson Learning did accommodate UC Berkeley's math department by breaking the textbook, which is used for three semesters, into two cheaper softcover books, said math professor Michael Christ.

Christ said he did not sign the CalPIRG letter because he wasn't sure it was balanced. But he suggested that publishers could offer inexpensive updated supplements rather than reissuing textbooks.

CalPIRG's letter also noted that Thomson Learning sells the book cheaper overseas -- $59.36 in England, compared with $122.36 in the United States, for example. The company said that's because Americans can bear those prices, and without foreign sales, prices here would be even higher.

Assemblyman Koretz's AB 2678 aims to ease the crunch by allowing California colleges and universities to levy fees and start textbook rental services. Related legislation, AB 2477 from Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, would get publishers to unbundle their textbooks and specify all the changes in a new edition.

UC Berkeley sophomore Camille Pannu would like relief. She spent more than $1,000 this year on textbooks.

"A thousand dollars is your rent for the month," she said.