Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL?

[Lutger]

Brad Roberts wrote:

> BCS wrote:
>> 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. (That and the fact most
>> profs never worry about what a book costs when they spend your money)
> 
> The cost of printing, shipping, etc.. on a per-book basis is actually very very
> low.  In the neighborhood of a few dollars.  No where near the around $100 that
> a lot of textbooks sell for.  One of the reasons they cost so much is that many
> of them are rev'ed every couple years, meaning that they have to make whatever
> profit they want to make _fast_.  They're rev'ed so fast at least in part to
> kill off the used market.
> 
> There's also an awful lot of effort that goes into producing them.  Authors,
> Editors, fact checking, copy setting, etc.
> 
> Anyway, it's an ugly cycle that's bound to implode eventually.
> 
> Later,
> Brad

Another contributing factor is that experts typically not want to write textbooks (boring), so they get paid very well to do it.