I’m going to my college 50th reunion next year, so I admit I’m a little behind the times when it comes to the current college scene, but I just saw someone on Craig’s List offering to sell a math text book which the poster says has a damaged spine so that he could not sell it back to the college bookstore and is instead offering it on Craig’s List at a bargain price: $90. $90! A bargain price! Good grief! What do college textbooks typically cost these days?
$90 is probably about average because it varies from course to course. For a math book, $90 is probably a great deal. Ten years ago, I paid $140 for a new calculus text book.
Last year, I finished my accounting degree from UOP Online. We were charge $75 per class for PDF versions of the required textbook(s). The two auditing classes used the same book, so I effectively paid $150 for it.
One of my accounting reference books was written by a UCLA professor who uses it in his classes. It was $250.
Brand new, anywhere from $120 - $180 typically.
These aren’t the true market prices for the books, however. I just bought an economics textbook in decent condition from a seller on eBay for $7.00 with shipping (it is the newest edition). I’ve bought previous edition books before where the only change was with graphics or the introduction.
This is probably a lot more common with more popular, early classes though. I had a professor that listed his own book as a requirement that we never once cracked open. It was only available at the college bookstore, of course, for the low price of $75.
The college textbook market is a racket alright. And as mentioned, teachers writing their own books and then requiring them for the course. Chutzpah, I tell you!
Many of my brand-new engineering textbooks cost upwards of $120-150. My calculus text cost $180 if I recall (though it lasted several semesters through 2 or 3 calculus classes).
An English class will probably assign 15 - 25~ $10 books.
A science/engineering class will probably assign one large 500+ page hardcover textbook that will set you back $120 - $180.
A social science class will probably assign one or two softcover 100 - 300 page books that will set you back $40 -$80 each.
The margin on a textbook for the store is around 25%. The publisher pays about $5 to make a textbook, not including whatever fees it pays the authors and other IP holders.
That’s all based on the documents I’ve seen at the for-profit store I work for. Many schools have a store run by the student union (or whatever) that sells the books for 10% less or so. They’re subsidized by student fees, so you’re still paying for it I suppose. The only real way to beat the system is to either download a pdf file of the book (pirated), private sale, or try to find an international edition, which I’ve never seen anyone actually do.
Worst single book I ever saw was a medical textbook for $1800. It was a special order though. Worst class had 15 $50 books for it. Worst semester was one poor kid in engineering who somehow had to buy $1300~ in books for one semester. Best I ever saw was this guy who bought 24 engineering books for $2 each from this write off table and then immediately sell them back to our store for $48 each.
I probably averaged $500 a semester. If you really want to, at my university, you could just get all the books at the library. It’d be a pain, but it’d save you a bundle.
I was paying $150-200 in the 90’s for my math and engineering books. Besides the university, there was an independent store that sold textbooks, but it went out of business. Why? Next door to it was a photocopy store whose owner didn’t mind letting students copy whole textbooks, which were then returned to the bookstore. The copystore is still in business.
You know so far I’ve only had 1 lecturer who’s done this (i’m in 2nd year at an Australian Uni) and he explained to everyone at the start of the course the book would be useful and that he’d done his best to make sure the price stayed under AUD$25. I was really impressed by this.
I had one professor who wrote the lab manual we used but it was only priced at around $20 so it wasn’t a big deal. I paid $100 for my Algebra book back in 2006 but it was brand new. I spent $150 on my World Civilization book but that lasted me for two semesters. Once I got into upper level history courses the price of books dropped dramatically and in some cases we didn’t have to purchase books at all. Even when we did the books were often published many years in the past and the price wasn’t all that high.
Of course we read a whole lot of peer reviewed articles, primary sources, and I couldn’t have finished my senior project without interlibrary loans. One of the secondary source books I used would have cost me $80 to buy and it wasn’t a particularly large book.
Odesio
College test books are a complete racket. I am spending about $600 a semester for books for my son these days and very, very few are resalable. Even basic texts, like college math, have to be bought new each year because the publishers issue “revised” editions each year. You could try to use a book from a previous year but one or more chapters may be missing or there may be other subtle differences that could affect a student’s grade. You don’t want take the chance do you?
In grad school I bought a lot of very thin, specialized books for large sums (at the time), that just happened to have been written by a professor in my department. One could make the case that I was studying a specialized topic so these books were rare and the people capable of writing them even more rare.
Many of my teachers will create lesson plans (and choose hoomework problems) around material common to current and past editions of a textbook. I’ve found it worthwhile to contact professors a little bit before a class begins and ask if the current textbook is necessary, or if one can use a prior edition; often they’ll allow older editions. My last stat class used a brand-new $125 9th-edition textbook (with $60 student solutions manual), but all of the class material and the homework assigned was compatible with the 8th edition ($20 for book + solutions manual).
Don’t forget the $50 photocopied packet of short stories and articles.
College textbook prices are indeed largely set by “a racket,” but there is another issue as well: low volume. When you print several million copies of the latest Stephen King blockbuster, your fixed costs are amortized down to virtually nothing. But how many copies do you think they sell of third-semester object-oriented programming for inventory control systems? Very few. So everybody carries a much larger portion of the fixed costs.
That said, when I pick textbooks for my students (I teach college engineering), I try to keep them below $100…TRM
Serious question… why don’t publishers make this stuff available online, for a much reduced price? Pretty much all students have net access, so why are these vast 800-page hardback tomes still being printed in small (and therefore very expensive) print runs?
There is more than just printing setup costs in the fixed costs. You need editors, illustrators, typesetters, etc. that cost the same online.
Actually, that is beginning to happen. But progress is slow…TRM
At UW-Platteville (and many other universities I assume) texbook rental is part of tuition. During my 10 semester (plus two summers) time, I bought < $100 in books.
Brian
I try to pick paperback editions of textbooks that will last at least a few years until they upgrade to the next edition.
The costs are just outrageous. I let students share textbooks in class and also put a few copies on reserve in the library.