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RANT: College textbooks - Why are they so *@(!ing expensive?

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Carol Haynes:
Its simple economics - the market is tiny, and in the case of technology the books are defunct in a year or two limiting sales further.

What this doesn't explain is why eBooks are pretty much the same price when there are no printing overheads.

Maybe authors should simply start publishing their own books in electronic form only, charge a reasonable price and make a lot more money.

TaoPhoenix:

Print texts are a scam.

POD tech is just 2-3 years away, but they want you to believe it still costs an arm and a leg to print these things.

And the thread is being generous at $80, there are some books going for $250.

capitalH:
In South Africa, I found that pre-grad books were relatively cheap (About R100-R300 ~ $14-$42 at current FX), however postgrad books where the market is terribly small the books easily jumped to R1500-R3000. Luckily though if you are the only student (like I was), you just borrow the library copy permanently (and return it for a day when your two renewals expires).

JavaJones:
There's no way printing costs for a 200 page book are $20-$25. You can get print-on-demand stuff of high quality for less than that (yes, even hard bound). Even taking into account the "relatively low" volume the cost of printing is probably a minority of the total price.

- Oshyan

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