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[mainiac]

Suppose a textbook costs $300.  Suppose you have three authors and editors, each of which are getting compensated $100,000.  How many books does it take to recoup those costs?  The cost of actually printing and shipping a book is about $10.

How many textbooks do you know where they only ship 1000 copies?

[Sergarr]

Usually textbooks with that price tag are very specialized and they are so costly because there is only a small number of them printed but need a lot of experts and staff to edit.

edit: and the publisher often has a monopoly in his niche

Well, I currently have before me a book from a very specialized textbook series about Material Science centered around Nuclear construction and functional materials. 7 books, each has about 5 different authors, about 600 pages in each, each costs about 600 rubles, which is less than 10$ at modern exchange rate... and I've loaned it from a library for free

communism

[MarcAFK]

$300 was an exaggeration, most lower level courses over here require $50-$100 textbooks, with $100-150 being average for medicine or more advanced subjects like engineering. And then I found this one: https://www.qubooks.com.au/viewbook.php?isbn=0455235481
Price:  $253.95 . And a medical one which was $283.

[mainiac]

Anyway you slice it though, books are ridiculously overpriced.  Royalties are only a few bucks a book even for the small runs.

[Sergarr]

Anyway you slice it though, books are ridiculously overpriced.  Royalties are only a few bucks a book even for the small runs.

But why are they overpriced? Is it to maintain the same "ye olde" social dynamics where only rich people can allow higher education? The same higher education which apparently make people ignore objective reality in favor of their own little fantasy world?

Where do physicists-engineers come from, then? Private companies?

[Zangi]

Monopoly.  There ain't a lot of competition.  And their primary customer base is a captive market, one they don't even need to market to.  They only need to convince the college/school/teacher to use their books.  Not the students who have to buy it at full price.
So they can charge whatever the heck they want.

[nenjin]

Anyway you slice it though, books are ridiculously overpriced.  Royalties are only a few bucks a book even for the small runs.

But why are they overpriced?

Because previously textbook publishers had a virtual monopoly on college resources. Colleges required students to buy books, specific books, and publishers could reap the benefits by providing them. As times are changing and it's more affordable than ever to get people the information they need, publishers are refusing to adapt to technologies which would result in lower profits for them.

Seriously, I've been charged $20 for a 10 page paper packet with staples in it. That shit should cost about a buck. But because you have to pay for the publisher's profits, their entire work force and their printing expenses, a booklet that probably cost them 15 cents to make cost me $20 to buy.

[Sergarr]

Anyway you slice it though, books are ridiculously overpriced.  Royalties are only a few bucks a book even for the small runs.

But why are they overpriced?

Because previously textbook publishers had a virtual monopoly on college resources. Colleges required students to buy books, specific books, and publishers could reap the benefits by providing them. As times are changing and it's more affordable than ever to get people the information they need, publishers are refusing to adapt to technologies which would result in lower profits for them.

Seriously, I've been charged $20 for a 10 page paper packet with staples in it. That shit should cost about a buck. But because you have to pay for the publisher's profits, their entire work force and their printing expenses, a booklet that probably cost them 15 cents to make cost me $20 to buy.

Monopoly.  There ain't a lot of competition.  And their primary customer base is a captive market, one they don't even need to market to.  They only need to convince the college/school/teacher to use their books.  Not the students who have to buy it at full price.
So they can charge whatever the heck they want.

I thought there were anti-monopoly laws specifically designed to combat that? What prevents them from being used?

[mainiac]

I thought there were anti-monopoly laws specifically designed to combat that? What prevents them from being used?

Anti-monopoly laws dont apply to intellectual property.  For those we have pro-monopoly laws.

[Sergarr]

I thought there were anti-monopoly laws specifically designed to combat that? What prevents them from being used?

Anti-monopoly laws dont apply to intellectual property.  For those we have pro-monopoly laws.

That sounds pretty stupid, what was their justification for that?

[Owlbread]

Is this how it feels to live in a land of communism?

No, it's how it feels to live in a country that has the correct/decent approach to higher education. I would consider what you're experiencing (and, to an extent, what Scots experience) to almost be the the bare minimum standard - the majority of people here commenting are from countries where their approaches to higher education funding fall well below the minimum standard e.g. the States/England.

It's the same kind of thing as when certain people in the States consider the UK Socialist for having an NHS that's supposed to be free-at-point-of-use. I don't know about calling it "Socialist" (I'd consider nationalising manufacturing industries to be Socialist), I'd just say it's the minimum standard for a healthcare system in any decent country. To me it's them who are unusually right-wing for not having any kind of publicly funded healthcare system, rather than us being unusually far left. It's all a matter of perspective.

[mainiac]

That sounds pretty stupid, what was their justification for that?

To reward people for making creative works and designs.  Without any monopolies for creative work it would be hard for producers to stay in business.

It's a rather tricky issue of balance that our special interest ridden politics leave the world ill equipped to fine tune.

[Owlbread]

I tend to think the whole printed-textbook industry's days are numbered anyway. Students nowadays, at least in Scotland, tend to expect online resources such as ebooks or other online articles, so it's quite common for lecturers to make illegally scanned images of relevant extracts from print-only course books available for younger students. Eventually all those books are going to be available online. You'll still have to pay a charge to get access to them though - a monthly subscription or something, as is the case for most materials currently available online.

[nenjin]

I tend to think the whole printed-textbook industry's days are numbered anyway. Students nowadays, at least in Scotland, tend to expect online resources such as ebooks or other online articles, so it's quite common for lecturers to make illegally scanned images of relevant extracts from course books available for younger students. Eventually all those books are going to be available online.

Here's what I don't get: publishers could stand to cut their bottomline significantly if they'd digitize their offerings. Create a fucking web portal for people to log into to view documents so they can't copy/paste them out and put them on up on a torrent site somewhere. They could eliminate a ton of cost in redundant printing (virtually all the books they print end up as recycling because they're outdated within 3 years of being sold, and an outdated text book is useful to exactly no one in college) and reduce costs to make students happier. But I suppose for them it's the difference between making "some of the monies" and "ALL THE MONIES." But I generally agree with Owlbread, the print industry in textbooks is headed for its demise. In another 10 years when you can expect 90% of college students to have a tablet or mobile device, they're just not going to stay competitive.

The only reason it hasn't happened already is probably because college administrators and presidents refuse to get out of bed with publishers. I'm sure University decision makers enjoy a lot of perks courtesy of the industry they serve up the entire American student body to.

Anyways, that's kind of a derail. American college textbook publishing isn't European politics.

[Sergarr]

That sounds pretty stupid, what was their justification for that?

To reward people for making creative works and designs.  Without any monopolies for creative work it would be hard for producers to stay in business.

It's a rather tricky issue of balance that our special interest ridden politics leave the world ill equipped to fine tune.

Yeah... Rewarding people for making creative works is fine, but up to a certain limit. If you go above it, you start to prevent others from doing the creative work more than you do it yourself.

I'd say that time limit for creative works should be 10 years, at best, before they become open for everyone to utilize as a part of their own creative work. 10 years sounds like enough time for a producer to come up with another creative work in the meantime, if he wants to continue creating, and if he doesn't, well, he shouldn't have the rights to prevent everyone else from doing it.

It definitely shouldn't be 70+ years, as the current laws dictate. People should not be able to literally live off something which their father has discovered - because they lose the motivation to actually do creative stuff by themselves and instead gain a motivation to buy lawyers to protect their rights to prevent everyone else from doing creative stuff and living off it. That shit should be unacceptable.