🚀 go-pugleaf

woodlab@u.washington.edu (Steven Ross Shook) writes:
> 
>In article CB5967A@american.edu (Christopher Brunn) writes:
>===========================================================
>>> Does anyone know why college textbooks are so expensive?  It has gotten
>>> ridiculous.

Has it really "gotten ridiculous"?  I recall paying $31.50 (actually in pounds
then, but there's no "pound" on this keyboard so I've converted to modern $$ :)
for an organic chemistry text years ago.  If book prices had gone up at the
same rate as graduate starting salaries, then it would sell for around $280
now.  Maybe it does for all I know.  But I must admit my "resistance level"
to book prices hasn't kept up with with this simplistic proportional example.
(There is also another side to this coin -- scientific salaries have not
kept pace with accountants, quacks, lawyers, salesmen, plumbers, etc. over the
past 20 years or so; they've fallen behind by about 40%, so maybe that $280 
should be more like $460 if the wider economy is used as the basis for
comparison :)

>>> I would like to know if anyone has any information on how textbooks are
>>> priced, what the profit margins are, and who reaps them?  Are most campus

The retail margin here in Oz is 40% as far as I can work out.  Many book
sellers also add 40% to the overseas *retail* price, plus postage, if you
ask them to order in a book not normally available here :-(

>gt0332c@prism.gatech.edu (George Graham) responds:
>==================================================
>> I think some of the reasons they are so expensive are:
> 
>> 1) Smaller audience that say a hard cover King novel, therefore higher
>>    price per book.
>> 2) More expensive to produce:  equations, pictures, mistakes, etc.
>> 3) Captive audience:  We as students don't have a choice.

>Although George's number 1 and 2 reasons appear to be very logical, they 
>really shouldn't have any bearing on the cost of textbooks to consumers.  
>First, if the audience (or number of consumers) is small, then price 
>should decline - just your everyday supply and demand theory.... Second, 

Heh, heh.  It doesn't quite work like that with books.  The production
costs are largely fixed, with a relatively small marginal unit printing
cost once things are all set up.  So if a book costs $50,000 to get to
the printing stage, and they expect to sell only 500 copies, then the
publisher will want a wholesale price of $100 plus $unit_printing plus
margin% per copy.  If they don't reckon they can cover costs they just
don't publish.  [Does "supply & demand" actually work for anything other
than the fresh food market anyway?  ;-) ]

My main complaint about the system is that publishers take such a pessimistic
view of sales that they set the price so high that their forecasts are
self-fulfilling!  I can think of a number of technical books over the years
(mostly botanical stuff in this case) where the publisher could have sold
at least four or five copies just in this town of 6,000 people, if the prices 
had been even half reasonable.  But the prices weren't reasonable so even the
library didn't buy a copy.

>textbooks are really no more expensive to produce than any other book - 
>with the exception of textbooks that use 2 or more colors. Equations and 
>pictures have no _significant_ impact on cost.  The paper that books are 

I guess this is probably true now, with modern technology.  It must have
been a type-setting nightmare once though.  Proofing costs are probably
high still -- both because of the difficulty and the fact that errors are
less tolerable than in your average airport paperback.

>I completely agree with number 3. The bookseller essentially has a captive 
>buyer.  

Knowing what the market is in advance should enable more accurate costing.
Maybe that's all that's really happening -- combined with a pessimistic
view of opportunistic sales volume.

>However, the cost to produce these books used to be great - but when the 
>costs declined for the publishers (due to advanced technology) they 
>didn't share their savings with the consumer. 

Have you noticed that banks have done the same?  Modern technology has
not only reduced their costs without any benefit to the customers [in
my experience, just the reverse in fact] but it has also enabled banks
to introduce fees for services that they couldn't possibly economically
charge for under the old manual systems.

-- 

Ian Staples                        E-mail : ianst@dpi.qld.gov.au
c/- P.O. Box 1054 MAREEBA          Phone  : +61 (0)70 921 555 Home 924 847
Queensland Australia 4880            Fax  : +61 (0)70 923 593   "   "   "