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It sounds like they are rationally taking advantage of a situation that they are not forcibly creating. That's not going mad with power; they are just charging
by xlnt 18y ago
It sounds like they are rationally taking advantage of a situation that they are not forcibly creating. That's not going mad with power; they are just charging what people will pay.
- SwellJoe 18y agoI'd feel better about it if I didn't know the textbook manufacturers have a suspiciously friendly relationship with the people who select the texts.
- hugh 18y agoIn my experience the people who select the text are just professors, either individually or in some kind of committee. Yes, the publishers will send them free copies of textbooks, but that's not exactly a great perk. There could really be room for a startup publisher to come along and start selling a $30 textbook series, though. It's not that hard to find somebody who can write a textbook of reasonably high quality for, say, first-year physics or chemistry, and if you make enough noise about how overpriced the other textbooks are it shouldn't be too hard to persuade at least some departments to adopt your book.
- xlnt 18y agoa professor told me he gave up picking cheap books because the campus bookstore marks them up to the same price, anyway