Interesting, thought the students here would apprieciate: http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=7074470542065796959 surf
Good video The argument that the publishers use is that its not so much the production costs as the salaries they pay a staff of professors to write the academic books. They also raise prices to offset lost sales due to students reselling their used textbooks. They are still a complete rip-off, and he does make a good point about the same materials being sold in other countries for 90% less.
thanks. i see a business in arbing the prices from china to US.... let em come after me and expose themselves publically. surf:eek:
The distribution rights acquired by some publishers in other countries is just the cost of the distribution rights. Thus their cost to breakeven is much lower than the original publisher who paid seed dollar to create those books in the first place. Usually such rights have limitations like restricted distribution area. e.g. within a specific region or country If a business is not reasonably profitable, no one with the right mind will risk their money in such business. Reasonable means comparable to any other ventures available, money is the scarce resources here. Can't blame the publishers for that.
Thanks for link surfer, good vid. As always, solid information LC, you are truly an asset to this board. I'd also suggest that you guys listen to this.. http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2008-0510-3b.asx
We all know that. A computer language book usually cost around 30 to 40 dollars. A computer language book for student, it's 60 to 90. I remembered when I was taking CS 101, and the intro Java book cost $70, and it was full of error. I ended up dropping the class because I cannot complete the assignment due to many errors in the book. A semester later, they revised the book, of course, it cost student another $70.
An interesting development in education textbook is the organic growth of freely available textbook-like materials. As more and more information is entered into wikipedia and similar sites, knowledge, up to undergraduate materials, are much more readily available through the web, like the various online tutorials posted by the universities themselves. So far, I can find a lot of undergrad textbook materials on the web, but usually limited to scientific areas like math, engineering, statistics, physics, etc. For graduate level materials, you can easily download research papers, master and phd thesis ... I have seen kids in high school learned all they need in programming, math, and statistics for 1st and 2nd yr college over a summer by simply surfing the web. Of course, some adult supervision is needed, otherwise social networking sites are the ones they end up browsing. Maybe such changes will force the textbook industry to change.