Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"BCS" <none at anon.com> wrote in message 
news:a6268ff5d238cba2e80afc1d36 at news.digitalmars.com...
> Hello Nick,
>
>> (and double the
>> price (or more) from what would typically be reasonable)
>
> I have been told (without supporting evidence) that the price of text 
> books is so high because about 10 times as many are printed as sold. This 
> is because they don't have time between when they know what they need and 
> when they need it, to print what they need. The other 90% of the books you 
> end up paying for get pulped.

I find that difficult (though not impossible) to believe. Most of the 
academic texts out there are just new editions that have barely anything 
changed, and not much content that really needs to be particularly timely 
either (Because of that, BTW, I'm convinced the updates are primarily done 
to curb the second-hand market. I've had plenty of profs require the latest 
edition when the last few editions turned out to be nearly identical). And 
even those updates don't happen every single school year. The same edition 
is usually still the newest for at least a couple years in a row, usually 
more. If they're ending up with so much extra stock, why not just sell that 
stock in the following years instead of pulping and printing new? Or, if 
they really are ending up with 90% extra on such a regular basis, 
maaaaayyyybbeeee it's time to re-evaluate how many they choose to print? It 
just doesn't seem to add up. But then again, nether do most things regarding 
academia.

> (That and the fact most profs never worry about what a book costs when 
> they spend your money)

Now *that* one I definitely *don't* have any difficulty believing. Hell, 
half of the college classes out there amount to nothing more than US$2k book 
recommendations. For those classes, most of the prof's "teaching" amounts to 
nothing more than saying what book to buy, and having the students read it. 
If the instructor doesn't care about wasting a couple thousand of the 
student's dollars when the only real value in the entire class is the book 
itself, they're certainly not going to care if the book happens to cost 
$50-$100 too much.