As I say, I think much of the issue here is that he's generalising based on tech books which have higher costs (they're bigger, cost more to print, store and sh

As I say, I think much of the issue here is that he's generalising based on tech books which have higher costs (they're bigger, cost more to print, store and ship), sell in smaller volumes and go out of date faster (leading to far higher numbers of returns). Full breakdown here but the publisher is basically getting about 50% of the list price so your $30 is already down to $15 by the time it gets there: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_the_costs_of_publishing_a_book_break_down.html http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_the_costs_of_publishing_... He's probably right that tech books are broken but I think it's important to distinguish between technical books and other books which don't share the same model.