Brad Roberts wrote: > BCS wrote: >> Hello Nick, >> >>> (and double the >>> price (or more) from what would typically be reasonable) >> >> I have been told (without supporting evidence) that the price of text >> books is so high because about 10 times as many are printed as sold. >> This is because they don't have time between when they know what they >> need and when they need it, to print what they need. The other 90% of >> the books you end up paying for get pulped. (That and the fact most >> profs never worry about what a book costs when they spend your money) > > The cost of printing, shipping, etc.. on a per-book basis is actually very > very > low. In the neighborhood of a few dollars. No where near the around $100 > that > a lot of textbooks sell for. One of the reasons they cost so much is that > many > of them are rev'ed every couple years, meaning that they have to make whatever > profit they want to make _fast_. They're rev'ed so fast at least in part to > kill off the used market. > > There's also an awful lot of effort that goes into producing them. Authors, > Editors, fact checking, copy setting, etc. > > Anyway, it's an ugly cycle that's bound to implode eventually. > > Later, > Brad
Another contributing factor is that experts typically not want to write textbooks (boring), so they get paid very well to do it.
