🚀 go-pugleaf

> >il@utai.UUCP (Indra Laksono) writes (in "FLAMES on textbook prices"):
> >Has anyone ever done a study of the rate of increase of textbook prices
> >on a year to year basis?  Last year's inflation was 4.6%.  Is it my
> >imagination or are the book prices going up at more than that across the 
> >street?
> 
Tim Horton replies:
> The implied gripe may be a bit wrong-sighted.
> For example: LOTS of books come from outside Canada.  The Canadian dollar
> hasn't done well on international markets over the last 2 years.  Etc.
> You can't complain until you know where the "inflation" is coming from.
> It might even come indirectly from you - like more money to faculty and
> students, less money to subsidize the bookroom this year.  Or whatever.
> The complaint may be valid, but before griping you ought to question
> it from a broader perspective.  ("but that's not the NDP way" :-)

A perfectly reasonable observation (which I have noticed myself) answered
with an aggressive and sneering reply ("not the NDP way" -- who said anything
about the NDP?).  What's your problem, Tim?

As for the substance of it, the dollar argument would apply in the case of
West German or British texts, but most are either Canadian or American,
and the Cdn dollar has remained between 73 and 78 cents US for a long time, so
that can't make much difference.  In fact, over the last year or so, the
Cdn dollar has been higher w/r/t the American, which would make US texts
cheaper.

As for bookroom subsidies, that wouldn't affect textbook prices at other
bookstores, which have also gone up by a great deal.

I think a study of textbook inflation is a great idea.  Price fixing can
(and does) happen in a free market and any big increase is at least a cause
for reasonable suspicion.  This is something that student lobby groups like
the OFS would, one hopes, look into.

In terms of explanations, I remember seeing a pamphlet from a publishers'
association explaining it in terms of printing costs, editorial costs,
and the fact that books are out-of-date sooner (and thus have a shorter
life over which to recoup editorial costs), but whether or not those
factors justify the observed increases is still a very good question.

Peter Rowley
Univ. of Toronto