<p>I didn't pay more than $50 for a textbook this semester.</p>
<p>Wow---has Temple "gotten" it, or are you just an astute shopper?</p>
<p>My D had to buy a poetry book - $90.00 Spanish book that is a half inch thick soft cover BUT, oh, joy, you also register online to do work there for, kaching and a drum roll.............$110.00!!!!!! Crazy. She since has found the poetry book on Amazon for $41 so back it went and Amazon here she comes.</p>
<p>
[Quote]
If you have time, and know stuff ahead of time buying a text from England or India can save you very big bucks. But you need a lead time for shipping.
[/Quote]
</p>
<p>Words of wisdom right there. </p>
<p>This semester, I bought my Calculus book online for $10 + $15 for shipping (shipped from Delhi, India). Book is the exact same as the English version, except at the top of the front cover it says "India Edition." Same chapters, lessons, questions, etc... The kids that sit around me paid a little south of $100 for their books that they bought from the campus bookstore. Sucks for them.</p>
<p>I've purchased books in Singapore and they run about 1/3rd the price. Exact same book. Son has one class this semester with no textbook. But I bought him the textbook that I expected the class to use. Many of his major textbooks are good for use when he goes to work which is nice. I'm shocked at a precalc book over $200. Our daughter's was $188 at the bookstore and we got it at about $120 at B&N.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wow---has Temple "gotten" it, or are you just an astute shopper?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I bought everything at our bookstore, and for the most part, new.</p>
<p>My S's school publishes a book list with ISBNs and he searches for them on half.com, but how do you find international editions and how can you tell that they are identical to the US books?</p>
<p>As a professor for 18 years, I think textbooks have gotten out of hand. From what I've learned textbooks are a declining market, publishers are massively consolidating, and I believe they are pushing mark ups to offset the losses perhaps. Also with rising tuition, publishers may realize more price insensitivity about texts (relative to all the other educational costs). But it's only a guess as I'm not in this industry. </p>
<p>I care very very much about the costs of my books. I've never asked a sales rep, but I do ask my bookstore in advance (since I need to know their markup as well). And I think professors should know and care. Though at times one doesn't have a choice (I'm not going ot assign a cheap but very poor textbook over a more expensive but fantastic textbook so I get stuck at times). I always recommend older versions of my text, since new ones are never sufficiently different in my field. In some cases I have resorted to books available as online texts because they are less expensive. And going to smaller publishers. But once these small publishers are bought up by the big publishers (this happens a lot), the prices go way up. One online textbook retailed for $28 four years ago with a newish start up, now listed at $80 now that the start up is owned by a giant publisher.</p>
<p>Many of us are also turning to creating our own reading packages in place of texts. That helps becuase we can tailor the material better, and choose the best of the best, and sometimes its much more cost effective, but the copyright fees are also going up it seems.</p>
<p>I doubt that international versions are sufficiently different (or different at all) to make a difference. Usually they have regional examples or change of words, not missing chapters. </p>
<p>If your child cares that much, they can always team up with a classmate to cover potential differences. But really unlikely to matter in the big scheme of things.</p>
<p>Does anyone know why some states charge sales tax on textbooks and some don't? (I am referring to college bookstore purchases, not online).</p>
<p>I worked for 15 years in the college textbook industry--for a publisher and later for a company that subcontracted with publishers. There are couple of additional factors that affect cost, which no one has mentioned. Textbooks are very labor intensive. The production of one textbook can involve as many as 7-8 professionals, e.g., keyboarders, proofreaders, copy editors, project editors, artists, graphic designers, fact checkers, and production people who are skilled in Quark, Photoshop, etc. No one is getting rich in this industry. In fact, most of the production work is going to India (which is an attempt to cut labor costs--don't get me started on this). Authors aren't getting rich writing textbooks either. I only mentioned folks working on the production end--they aren't the only ones involved in getting a book to the student. There are also people involved in acquisition, sales and marketing of textbooks. At the very end of the process is the printer and printing costs have skyrocketed over the years. Another reason for high costs--the companies have a captive audience. Consumers can't shop around. There is almost no competition in college textbook publishing. There are three major college textbook publishers in the US (Pearson, Cengage, McGraw Hill)--it's an industry where there have been many mergers, leaving many unemployed or working as independent contractors for their former employers with no benefits. Another factor that bumps up costs is bundling. Back in the day--all a student got was a book. Now there are CDs and all kinds of resource materials that are sold along with the textbook and this drives up the costs. Science/math books are more labor intensive than a political science or business text, which is one reason those often cost more. Most editions after the first involve very minor changes and this along with bundling is where publishing companies are making money. The big costs all went into the first edition. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.</p>
<p>I make contributions to open source software and have donated thousands of hours of labor to one project. There is a lot of high-quality open source software available for free on the web and it's a result of a huge amount of work by highly skilled people around the world. Building an operating system, web browser, email client, office suite, graphics editor, etc. are pretty challenging and labor-intensive.</p>
<p>Why don't we have this for textbooks? We do have some of it as a few professors here and there make their textbooks available for free online. Berkeley, MIT, and many other colleges and universities make course videos available for free so that you can virtually sit in on a class. It seems to me that textbooks would be a natural for this.</p>
<p>Bromfield,
Could you, please, explain why "Science/math books are more labor intensive than a political science or business text"?</p>
<p>MiamiDAP:
Look at a botany text, in a chapter explaining photosynthesis, there are probably anywhere from 15-20 illustrations/drawings that the author uses to explain the process. Artists create those illustrations (or if they come from another source, the publisher has to get permission and pay to use them). A text in political science or history generally won't have as many graphs/charts/illustrations, and an artist wouldn't be involved in the production of them. That's one area where more labor is involved. Also,in texts containing many graphs/charts/illustrations or equations, there's more room for error so that even in something like proof reading, a proof reader ends up spending more time on that botany or chemistry book than on non-science text. More time means that it costs more to produce the book and that's passed along to the consumer.</p>
<p>I haven't read all of the posts in this thread so I apologize if I am redundant. My husband, along with 5 co-teachers wrote a book to be used with their community college students. The textbook company approached them to publish it and it was used in hundreds of schools both in the US and abroad. Unfortunately, when they signed the original contract, control over publishing resided with the company. If the authors refused to do updates, the company could take the book away and have someone esle revise it using their original ideas. The cc teachers had started with the idea of keeping costs down for their students but if they didn't do the expensive revisions, someone else would do it for them. They were pressured to revise every 3 years, sometimes just examples, so that old editions would be difficult to use. By the way, the last edition (I think number 6) was published 11 years ago and H recently got another royalty check.</p>
<p>How are the royalties he's been getting? From the professors I know that have written texts, they say it's one of the least efficient ways to pad your paycheck.</p>
<p>The royalties have dwindled now since it has been so long since the last revision and they are divided among 4 or 5 authors (not all of the original teachers continued to participate). Even at the highest point, the $$ was not enough to live on but an extra $10,000/year was certainly welcome. Their book was a paperback basic English writing text that was in wide distribution and sold for under $20.</p>
<p>Wow, that's actually not terrible. The people I know have written, like, graduate level texts on really niche markets, so the books sell for around $125 and are probably bought by about thirty people a year, haha.</p>
<p>I'm still annoyed at my professor that didn't tell us he had a third edition coming out in the spring when we had the course in the fall. I'm TAing the course now and he seems to be pressuring me to buy the new version so I'm on the same page (literally) as the students. I say if he wants me to have the new version, he ought to give me one!</p>
<p>RR--try writing to the publisher and telling the rep you're TAing for the class. You should get a free copy.</p>
<p>the dirty secret in the college text book industry is maintaining high prices by spitting out new editions which typically contain little or no new information.</p>
<p>Our son saved literally thousands of dollars by buying earlier editions and never found that it was a problem. The only time it was an annoyance was for a multivariable calculus where he bought a 2nd edition when an 8th(!!!!!) edition was assigned. The annoyance?-the problem set numbers had been changed. Not the problems themselves, just the numbering of them. His prof let him take a picture of his text with his cell phone and bingo, problem solved.</p>