I thought college students were supposed to be smart…
Apparently basic economics is no longer taught in high school.
I have seen about 10 of these threads and every one turns into a pile on of:
“YEAH THOSE ASSHOLE PUBLISHERS ARE JUST TRYING TO ROB US MAN!!!”
“STICKIN IT TO US LITTLE GUYS!!!”
“WE NEED GOVERNMENT REGULATION TO RESTRICT THIS HORRIFIC INJUSTICE”
Books are a profit business, like most others. Publishers have fixed costs that are incurred even when the presses are not running, leases, power bills, staff, etc.
An example:
Basic Fixed costs for publisher XYX $8,000/day
materials costs $0.01 per page
Time to reset presses for a new book 3 hours
.
Facility can generate 100,000 finished pages of book per hour.
Normal 8 hour workday.
Sample 1
The new Stephen King Novel “Death of a Textbook” hits the printers Its a 100 page book and the order is for 100,000 copies.
Costs $3000 in fixed costs to retool the presses.
100 hours @$1,000/hr in fixed costs to complete the print run.
$100,000 in materials costs (.01 per page)
Total costs (including royalties) $213,000/100,000 copies = $2.13 per book
2.13 + .43 profit/copy to publisher (20%) = $2.56 per copy
Sells book to wholesaler who gets a profit too.
2.56 per copy + wholesaler markup (he has expenses/profit too) .1.02/copy = $3.58 per copy.
Freds books buys books from wholesaler $3.58 + Freds costs/profit $0.1.45 = $5.01 per copy retail price.
Sample 2
Drachillix’s new textbook “Who the fuck would buy this!?!” arrives. Its a 200 page book and the order is for 1,000 copies.
Total costs (including royalties) $17,000 /1,000 copies = $17.00 per book
$17.00 + $3.40 profit to publisher (20%) = $20.40 per copy
Sells book to wholesaler who gets a profit too.
$20.40 per copy + wholesaler markup (he has expenses/profit too) $8.16/copy = $28.56 per copy.
Freds books buys books from wholesaler $28.56/copy + Freds costs/profit $11.42/copy = $39.98 per copy retail price.
Both of these examples asssume a flat royalty of $10,000. This is to demonstrate the difference print run size makes. Textbooks are short run highly perishible items.
If something new comes out in the world of biology that helps to understand some basic concept of cell structure…literally BILLIONS of dollars of textbooks are obsolete overnight. Who pays for this…maybe we should start filing lawsuits against those evil researchers who keep making our textbooks obsolete :rolleyes:
Even ancient history changes every year, not just new events, but new research related to old events. Or is the field of archeology now handled only by librarians in your world.
Even IF a publisher was charging an exorbitant sum for a textbook, another publisher will come out with a comparable text at a lower price. There are hundreds of publishers out ther and every day they fantasize about biting a chunk out of each others market share. They are always looking, and fighting for every extra dollar they can squeeze without losing market share to a competitor. A few cents a copy could make the deciding difference on the sales of hundreds of thousands of copies of a textbook worth millions of dollars.
Want a real bloodbath, take a long hard look at elementary school level textbooks…
Drach, who works in wholesale books…