Why do I need to pay 300$ for a 20 year old textbook?
I know that making a book takes a lot of effort but that price point is too much.
Why do I need to pay 300$ for a 20 year old textbook?
I know that making a book takes a lot of effort but that price point is too much.
Comments
Supply and demand
Keep supply low by constantly “revising” it (aka rearranging the chapters/questions so page numbers no longer line up with older versions)
And keep supply high by forcing students to buy them! What are you going to do, not buy the textbook you need to pass your expensive class?
Because you don’t have any (real) alternatives, when the course has picked a specific book. You “need” that book, so those selling the book can charge almost what they want.
I’m not too fond of professors chosing those books. And if they’re the author as well…
You could go with another book that teaches the same thing, but it’s going to be hard when the professor teaches to one specific book and what that book says about a subject.
Pirate or rent the books online. Don’t waste money on print copies.
The publishers can charge whatever they want for the books, basically. Massively profitable.
There is a monopoly: you have to get this specific textbook. This means consumers have no alternative, there is no competing product, which means the price does not „naturally“ go down via competition.
The total addressable market (the number of people potentially interested in buying your product) is very small: only a few students each year need the book. This means price per unit needs to be high or it isn’t worth the effort to produce it.
There are high market entry barriers: it is not easy to create a competing product. There are few experts who can write such a textbook, and those who do often prefer students use theirs. So you need to be someone who can write such a book, who has a captive market already (students of your own), and high enough academic standing that your book becomes popular outside just your own course.
The consumers are affluent and have high need: college is super expensive anyway (in the US, where textbooks are also super expensive). So your market has already shown they are prepared to spend a lot of money. And they simply need your product.
By the way, textbooks are not as outrageously expensive in other countries. The more interesting question might be why that is the case.
Because they can be. College is expensive in the first place and you can’t not buy them.
Because they can. They have an audience which is forced to buy the textbook for the class and are you going to let a $300 textbook get between you and the potentially millions more in earnings that you would make with your degree? Nope.
The worst is professors who require the textbook they wrote to get their cut of the text book profits.
That’s not saying that a motived student doesn’t have alternatives matey.