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One reason that some textbooks are so expensive is that they can take a lot of time and effort to produce and they're selling a few 10k of copies, at best. If y
by casca 15y ago
One reason that some textbooks are so expensive is that they can take a lot of time and effort to produce and they're selling a few 10k of copies, at best. If you have a professional at the top of their field earning $200k/year, writing the book might take 6 months. That's a lot of books to sell to justify the effort.
Will there really be the best text books available for $15 sold only by Apple? Possibly, but I wouldn't bet that this is end of this.
- jonhendry 15y ago"One reason that some textbooks are so expensive is that they can take a lot of time and effort to produce and they're selling a few 10k of copies, at best." That's more the case with college textbooks and specialized subjects. When you're talking about a US high school textbook, for something like biology or algebra, it could be hundreds of thousands of copies, maybe millions, if the book is widely adopted. (In 2011, there will be 14.5 million students in grades 9-12 in the US).
- Turing_Machine 15y agoCollege textbooks are generally written by professors who already get paid, in part, for producing scholarly work. Although textbooks don't get as much respect as original research, any money at all is more than they get for research articles (i.e., zero).