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I was looking for a book a while ago, it was something like $150 in the U.S. Out of curiosity, I looked up the price in other countries. It was 150 times the ex
by akudha 4y ago
I was looking for a book a while ago, it was something like $150 in the U.S. Out of curiosity, I looked up the price in other countries. It was 150 times the exchange rate.
150$ for a book is a lot of money even in the U.S. How do publishers expect other countries to pay the equivalent of 150$ (in local currency)? In many places $150 might be half the monthly salary or worse.
I understand publishers and authors need to get paid, especially the authors. It takes decades to gain expertise in difficult subjects and on top of it, one needs to be able to write well to create a good book. So yes, authors need to be compensated. But at the same time, their customer base in most cases are college kids. How do they expect them to pay? And how much of all that money goes to the authors anyway, who are the real experts vs the middlemen, the publishers?
The whole situation is just depressing.
- gruez 4y ago>But at the same time, their customer base in most cases are college kids. How do they expect them to pay? Student loans. When you flood an entire sector with money, it's only logical that prices go up.
- franga2000 4y ago> When you flood an entire sector with money, it's only logical that prices go up. Is it? The costs haven't increased and the value of money hasn't decreased. The only "logic" here is "the publishers are assholes".
- qeternity 4y ago> the value of money hasn't decreased This isn't true in the slightest, not sure why you think that. And producers don't charge what it costs them, they charge what people will pay. And if you flood consumers with capital that they can use for specific types of purchases, then you reduce their price sensitivity and prices increase. Why do you think college tuition has soared? All people on average are greedy, it's called being a rational self actor. But not everyone gets to charge insanely inflated prices year on year...they could if they would.
- franga2000 4y agoPoor phrasing on my part. The value of money hasn't changed as a result of the large amount of money students have because of loans, which is what the comment was citing as a reason. Obviously inflation exists, but I've never heard it linked in any significant way to student loans and it's not nearly as high as the increase in costs of textbooks that was being discussed.
- stevedewald 4y agoI think you have it backwards. The supply of quality education hasn’t increased. Only the dollars chasing that supply have increased. Hence prices have gone up.
- syrrim 4y agoThere is frequently a system where they sell an international version of the book for significantly lower cost. In order to prevent americans from simply purchasing the international version, it will often have substantial differences. So simply looking up the price of the same book may not show you what would typically be paid in another country.
- bombcar 4y agoThe publishers originally had a great system, back before the internet was alive and kicking - they'd sell the textbook in the USA for $bigbux, and sell the exact same one in India for $cheapasfree - basic standard price segmentation, charge what the market can bear in each market. But then the internet and cheap shipping appeared, and suddenly people in the USA realized they could get the same textbook by ordering it from someone in India, and pay $cheapasfree + $shipping. And ever since the publishers have been trying to get back to the original promised land.
- tartoran 4y agoThey could have lowered the price in the us enough to not make it worth getting a cheapo version which the quality is frequently worse. What many did instead was to lower the quality and sell at high prices, in many cases books have poor binding, poor print and editing and so on.
- bombcar 4y agoThat would involve them making less money, which is a big, big no-no. The whole thing is incestously corrupt as all hell.
- dotnet00 4y agoThe situation gets worse when considering the near racketeering many publishers engage in. I had a couple of professors who assigned us their own $100 textbooks, which of course had a new edition every year and while they wouldn't rely on it much in class, they'd make sure to include at least one question in the exams about something only mentioned in the textbook (without stating that that would happen). This kind of textbook "abuse" was pretty crazy in undergrad. In comparison, my graduate level professors all either used very old textbooks and didn't really care about the edition or outright used free textbooks.
- andai 4y agoSome of our professors would give us a "translation key" between new and old editions of textbooks, so we could work with used ones. For example, which exercises are assigned (in new editions they rearrange the exercises, for no apparent reason but to make the old editions obsolete...).
- barrenko 4y agoNot only that, but the last couple of times I actually ordered and paid for a book, it never actually arrived. I can get a refund, sure, but I really needed the books.