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My math teacher today said the book was not required.
I knew for some reason I didn't take off the plastic wrap for my math book. I am SO glad I didn't.The book was $180 and I returned it today. The woman working at the bookstore didn't seem all that happy....but then again she isn't one of their happier "associates" anyway.
The only thing we needed was some kind of access code to use online to submit our homework. It has tutorials and all that jazz.
Back in the late 1990s I recall reading a source I trusted (but I cannot now remember) that said that college textbooks made for 25% of the profits -- not revenue, profits -- of the North American publishing industry. The publishers are pirates of the highest order, and anything legal that can be done to hurt them should be done. Had I stayed in mainstream academia (rather than baling out and trying now to crawl back in), for my 101 text I would have ended up writing my own text and selling it on CD for the price of media.
Textbook publishers do make more money than other publishing houses, but there is a simple reason for that and it is not malice or greed.
Textbooks are printed in smaller numbers when compared to their read-for-leisure counterparts. It is not uncommon for a textbook to have a run of only 4,000 or 8,000 books. Of course that depends on the popularity of the course (Sociology, which seems to be a typical course that college students take as an elective will see a higher print run versus Microbiology, which is a course that the typical college student is not going to take will have a smaller print run), the credibility of the author(s), and the overall strength of the material. A leisure fiction or non-fiction will have a print run in the 100,000's. The majority, if not all, of those Sociology and Microbiology textbooks are going to get sold (to students), so very few will get returned to the publisher. The new John Grisham novel, let's say, will sell tons of copies, but a large amount will get sent back (not sold to anyone) after it has been on the shelf for a while.
Textbook publishers also do very little to no promotion of their books, so that is one or two (three?) less hands dipping into the profit pot.
I've used Amazon, CampusBooks, and Half.com, but in undergrad I mostly just networked with other students at my school and worked something out. A lot of schools also keep copies of textbooks in the library (albeit older versions), so unless you need a web code or something you can try to get one of those. She can also split the cost and share the book (and then resell it and split the proceeds).
Textbook publishers do make more money than other publishing houses, but there is a simple reason for that and it is not malice or greed.
Textbooks are printed in smaller numbers when compared to their read-for-leisure counterparts. It is not uncommon for a textbook to have a run of only 4,000 or 8,000 books. Of course that depends on the popularity of the course (Sociology, which seems to be a typical course that college students take as an elective will see a higher print run versus Microbiology, which is a course that the typical college student is not going to take will have a smaller print run), the credibility of the author(s), and the overall strength of the material. A leisure fiction or non-fiction will have a print run in the 100,000's. The majority, if not all, of those Sociology and Microbiology textbooks are going to get sold (to students), so very few will get returned to the publisher. The new John Grisham novel, let's say, will sell tons of copies, but a large amount will get sent back (not sold to anyone) after it has been on the shelf for a while.
Textbook publishers also do very little to no promotion of their books, so that is one or two (three?) less hands dipping into the profit pot.
The fact remains, however: college students are being unrelentingly raped by textbook publishers.
There's no need to churn out new editions of an astro 101 textbook every 18 months, except to obsolete the old editions.
There's also a curious fact about publishers and textbooks. As a bookstore operator, if you order 5 copies of something standard ... say, soft-cover edition of Hamlet, where there's no royalties to pay, no advertising, etc. ... from a publisher, you'll have a certain per-copy price.
If you order 100 copies of that book, the publisher will charge you a higher per-copy price, purely because they can get away with it, because only college bookstores order that many copies of that kind book at a time. The economies of scale that you mention are used to justify high textbook prices, but it's the economies of piracy that set the prices.
My copy of Halliday & Resnick's Physics volume 2 cost $11.50 in 1975 (it's sitting on my desk as I type, and the price is still stamped on the inside front cover). New copy of the current edition of the same text from the same publisher, through Amazon, new, is $94.05. That's a bit less than four times the increase in the CPI over that interval of time.
half.com is how I got through grad school. My other problem is that most professors don't even use the books that much. I feel your pain.
Yep, half.com is the way to go. I would buy them slightly used and then sell them back for almost what I paid for them. Too bad I didn't find out about half.com until 2/3 of the way through my education!
Talk to the professors as well. Sometimes they will allow you to use an older revision which will be a lot cheaper. The content isn't that much different. And its true that they hardly use the books anyways.
Just make sure that when using half.com the seller is in your country of origin if you are in a hurry and the book is the revision you want.
The whole thing is a cycle. The worst-case scenario I had to deal with (in several classes) went sort of like this:
-big name professor writes a textbook and a workbook.
-publisher pays the professor lots of money, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars
-publisher packages the textbook with a $5 CD-Rom and a $5 disposable workbook, all shrink-wrapped together.
-publisher sells this to the retailer, where it is marked up further
-professor mandates that students: "Must purchase the new edition, with the CD-ROM and the workbook"
-students follow directions, and buy the new, shrink-wrapped edition, with the $100 textbook, $50 for the CD-ROM, $50 for the workbook - $200 total.
-After the class is over, the student can't sell the textbook to anyone, because next year's students must have the CD-ROM and the unused workbook. Student sells textbook and CDROM back to bookstore for $15
-Publisher contacts professor, offering tens/hundreds of thousands to produce a new edition.
-Repeat cycle
There's no need to churn out new editions of an astro 101 textbook every 18 months, except to obsolete the old editions.
No, there is not, and yes they are trying to 'obsolete' the older editions; however, their intentions are to stay ahead of the used book market and not to give it college students the hard way. If the used college book market did not exist, or if it was at a level that was seen pre-1980's (almost non-existent) than text books would not be at the same price that they are now. They would still be expensive for a book, but the average price would be closer to $50 or $60 instead of $80 to $100.
Believe me, I do not like to pay the high price often asked for of a new text book; my Chemistry book was $175, and it is not that thick. At least it was the required text for both Chem I and Chem II. Maybe that is why it was so expensive?
I am not sticking up for the publishers or the college book stores, but I am a former student of the word and I still have hopes to one day make my living through writing. Since I know a bit about the publishing process and what a huge pain in the a$$ it is (at least for the authors) it is easy for me to not get too worked up over it.
The whole thing is a cycle. The worst-case scenario I had to deal with (in several classes) went sort of like this:
-big name professor writes a textbook and a workbook.
-publisher pays the professor lots of money, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is baloney. No text book author makes this sort of cash from one edition and no publisher is going to front this sort of money either. The only authors who have the clout to receive this sort of dough are the Stephan Kings of the world, and then it is still a maybe.
well, one of my teachers has been extremely honest with us. she told us the first day that the book we would be using this semester would not be used next year so we may experience issues selling them back. she told us the exact chapters we would be using and recommended that we just photocopy the chapters from the copies she had reserved in the library. she even told us that there was a way to "trick" the photocopier to print 2 pages for the price of one! I'll probably end up saving $80 from not having to buy books for that class. I wish more teachers was this forthcoming (I think my teacher is a recent grad so knows the heartache of buying overpriced books you'll never use)
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The book was $180 and I returned it today. The woman working at the bookstore didn't seem all that happy....but then again she isn't one of their happier "associates" anyway.
