TEXT BOOK PRICES ARE INSANE.

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72.95 for the oxford annoted translation of the bible for my hebrew studies course. Does that seem wrong to anyone else. its a nice bible and a good translation but yet it seems mad wrong. Let us discuss mad text book prices.

― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 9 September 2002 21:17 (twenty-four years ago)

$73 Canadian is not that much for a specialist book! If you want proof, come to Chicago and I'll show you how the estimates get worked out: in a nutshell, they can't be any cheaper unless more people are going to buy them.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 9 September 2002 21:25 (twenty-four years ago)

sorry nitsuh. it isnt really. its just i usually buy a months reading for 72.95 and its hard to find things used and when you shell out 500 a semester for books you feel a bit bleed. tell us more about textbooks.

― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 9 September 2002 21:31 (twenty-four years ago)

The WORST ever was one module I did at university. The lecturer insisted you bought the set book. In the first week's lab sessions, he refused admission to anyone without the book. After that, he never referred to it again. The really unforgiveable thing is that the book was written by his wife. I don't think it was a terribly expensive one, but this was terrible behaviour.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 9 September 2002 21:46 (twenty-four years ago)

Try senior level physics books or the $600+change I shelled out for five senior Computer Science textbooks. They teach us IT solutions out of a book, something is wrong here people. Compared to the junoir courses like Assembly Programming where the book was pulled offline (legaly) and they only charged us photocopying and binding charges.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Monday, 9 September 2002 23:15 (twenty-four years ago)

$200 for "Engineering Mechanics 'Statics'" and "Materials Science and Engineering, An Introduction". What kind of fucking bollocks is that?!

― Andrew (enneff), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 00:58 (twenty-four years ago)

The online-distribution model is the best bet for lowering prices: after all, it's not like the authors or the publishers are making loads of money off of the things. It's just ... the cost of printing really short runs of books is very, very high.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It also doesn't help when your bookstore is only ordering 10 or 12, sigh I wanna go back to school this 9 - 5 thing suxors, except every second Tuesday.
Its 11pm and Im falling asleep on my keyboard. How sad I have become.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 01:54 (twenty-four years ago)

I thought text books were "short run" in order to force students to buy new editions every year.

― bnw (bnw), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 05:36 (twenty-four years ago)

Hey, Anthony, at least a Bible is something you can refer to constantly, it ain't changin' till He comes back or finds a new Spokesperson (Charlie Manson, David Koresh, Osama bin Laden, and the Heaven's Gate guy don't count).

70 (American, not Canadian) dollars was the L-school rule. Since I worked for West during law school, I was able to get a 33% discount on books published by West and Foundation (which were the lion's share of law school casebooks -- maybe monopoly ain't so bad after all?) But still, a 33% on a $70 book meant I had to shell out $50 or so/book, still pretty fucking hefty for books that, for the most part, would be used once and never again. And you can almost never trade them in or sell them used, since new editions came out constantly -- and when you could sell trade them in, you'd get $10 tops on the dumb-ass theory that "law students don't buy used books" (actually told to me, with a straight face, by some slacker teen-aged Che T-shirt wearing book store clerk).

― Tad (llamasfur), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 05:56 (twenty-four years ago)

Still, I understand Nabisco's point -- economies of scale apply to book publishing, as with any other sort of production. And who in their right mind would actually want to buy a book on Econometrics, Quantum Mechanics, or Real Property (and how it evolved from the date of William the Conqueror [seriously]), unless you either had to take a class on the foregoing topics or you'd make some $$$ plowing through all that boring shit.

At least there's some revenge in that casebook authors don't make that much money off of their product -- only fitting, considering the misery those fucking things cause and it isn't as if law school professors need large royalties anyway.

― Tad (llamasfur), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 06:18 (twenty-four years ago)

art history textbooks are the worst. ive paid 175 dollars for one of those suckers.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 14:04 (twenty-four years ago)

That's why I'm so glad I'm finally done with school - last semester soaked up the last of my savings. It's painful to spend $100 for a book you usually only need to use a couple of times (of course it depends on the program you are in, but this was my experience in graduate school).

― Nicole (Nicole), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 14:08 (twenty-four years ago)

Tad, I have bought books on quantum mechanics, just for fun. I accept that I am in the minority on this.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 17:19 (twenty-four years ago)

Art history textbooks = they have lots of fancy pictures = fancy pictures cost lots of money to print.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 17:21 (twenty-four years ago)

Art history books are expensive, but they are often worth keeping.

― rosemary (rosemary), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 21:00 (twenty-four years ago)

of course the real connoisseurs throw them away after flipping through just once

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 21:13 (twenty-four years ago)

i love my art histoy books, i put ky in the spines and really love them

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 21:26 (twenty-four years ago)

I just paid $100 for an extremely thin Statics book as well, Andrew. Statics must be where the real money is.

― Vinnie (vprabhu), Tuesday, 10 September 2002 21:27 (twenty-four years ago)

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