While I certainly don’t expect academic texts to be priced comparably to Stephen King books, I do have to wonder if there isn’t more behind the prices than simple market forces.
Case in point: I started college in 1991. I finished grad school in 2001. During that period, the average price of physics books approximately doubled. Not just new books, but the exact same editions of existing books. Books that were $80 in 1991 were $200 in 1999. This doesn’t seem explainable by production costs. What’s more, the same books sold for much less in other countries, e.g. England.
I expect physics books to be more expensive than regular books, due to their limited readership. However, this sort of price discrepancy seems wrong to me. No one likes to be ripped off.
Indeed. Taking an example at random, say “University Physics” by Sears et al, which retails in the UK (on amazon.co.uk) at £45.99 (approximately $75). Looking on amazon.com, I find the same book retailling for $141 (approximately £80).
I quit buying my textbooks from the bookstore years ago, there’s just no reason to. I bought all of my books for this year on half.com and actually did save about half. I also sold my old books via half.com and got decent money for them (the ones with not every margin full of writing since I wouldn’t even feel right selling those). I agree the publishers come out with new editions every year, most of which have a sentence or two different from the previous edition. I’m in law school and my books have a list of cases in the front or back, making it possible to use old editions, as long as all the cases are there. If there’s a couple missing, you just photocopy it from someone with the new edition.
A co-worker of mine just buys her books with her classmates, 3 or more of them going in together to buy one book, then everyone else just photocopies it. If they were paying for the copies, it’d be a really stupid plan but fortunately my co-worker has access to a copy machine, free of charge.
And I don’t buy that whole “the bookstore is buying the books back at a risk of loss” schtick. When I was doing my undergrad work at a big university, they wouldn’t even buy them back if the book wasn’t going to be required the next semester. Considering the used books flew off the shelves, the store was guaranteed to sell all those books they were buying back (while charging double what they paid back for the book). Have to pay your overhead? Fine. But I’ve never bought the whole “we’re taking a risk buying this back from you and so that’s why we’re giving you a fraction of what you could get for it somewhere else” schtick. Come up with a better excuse for ripping people off.
The bookstore at my school now is basically a room with one cashier, so the “we’ve got to pay our overhead!” excuse doesn’t even fly. Of course, there’s never anyone in there since 99% of the students are smart enough to know about the plethora of alternative places to get books for about half the price. Also, the library tends to give away old versions of casebooks and the upperclassmen are awesome about giving away (or charging like $5) all their study guides to lowerclassmen at the start of each year. Which reminds me, I’ve got to get all of my first year study guides together to give away Tuesday, gotta keep the good karma going!
On one hand, I understand that high prices for books is a bugger, and like others, I won’t pay for a book with someone elses highlighting or margin notes. It’s rare for me to part with a book, period. That said, let’s look at this from another angle, shall we?
Frank writes the book.
Suzy proofreads the book.
Wilbur runs the presses that print the book.
Mia sells ink to feed Wilbur’s press.
Sam manufactures paper to fit Wilbur’s press.
Amy answers the phone where Wilbur prints.
Louey mops the cafeteria and the can for Amy and Wilbur.
AJ drives the truck that hauls the books to the store.
This list goes on ad infinitum when you examine one company whose product is printing books, and the economic relationship chain runs from the CEO of University Books R Us through the pressroom, office staff, suppliers, to the crew of guys who cut the grass out front, and the toilet paper vendor. All of those people are taking a penny or two of the book final cost. They’re also earning a living.
Perhaps the book should be printed overseas to save money?
My point being, that there’s nothing about your anecdote that disproves my input, which you imply with your “not buyin it.” THat you have encountered a single situation that was not in keeping with the generalizations I made does nothing more than prove the well known inadequacy of generalizations to address every single possible situation.
Well, considering I wasn’t addressing you, I don’t know why you thought I was attempting to disprove your point. Did I quote you in my first post? Or was I just responding like a majority of posters here that have shared their own experiences? (Hint: it’s the latter).
By the way, I didn’t encounter the “we won’t buy back books unless those books are going to be used in the upcoming semester” only one time. I have seen it at more than one college campus. It’s not like it was some freak occurance.
I don’t see why not. Professors, who dictate what books stores need to purchase and stock, have been known to change their minds about the books they’ll require. The store I work for does a half-price buy at the end of the long semesters. We once bought back a large number of business ethics book at half price, only to have the department require a different version at the start of the semester. Since the books were custom-published, there wasn’t any demand for them elsewhere. It’s happened with other books, but usually they were something that could be sold to recoup some of the money we spent on them.
