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Originally Posted by KevinH
The publishers are the ones going out of their way to constantly update their books and to stop publishing previous versions to force students to not be able to buy "used books"....
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Well...
For some subjects, the material does need to be constantly updated -- particularly hard and social sciences. Unless you're teaching at St. John's College, you might not want a physics textbook that is more than 2 years old.
For others, not so much. However it doesn't look like they put out new translations of Plato every year or two, so....
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Originally Posted by KevinH
Textbooks are outrageously priced and students should fight back. Talk to the administration.
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OK, but... have them do what? Subsidize the book costs?
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Originally Posted by KevinH
Talk to the professor.
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I agree, but clearly this doesn't always work.
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Originally Posted by KevinH
There is no reason for an e textbook to be priced even close to what a hard printed copy would be.
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Actually, there are a lot of reasons why ebooks, including textbooks, will have similar pricing to the paper equivalents.
You still have all the costs of writing, editing, layouts, legal, research, marketing, overhead, taxes and retail cut. The only cost you lose is the paper. Generally speaking that's around 15% of the total costs, though it's entirely plausible that the costs are higher for low-volume titles like textbooks. Perhaps 20% or even 25%, but probably not much more.
I also doubt that the publishers have extortionate profit margins. If they were making 30% profits per year, for example, odds are pretty good that someone in the business would drop their prices in order to get more business. I won't say the market works "perfectly," but there is enough competition to ensure competitive pricing.
The only part of this structure which I strongly disagree with is the expiration date. IMO there is no excuse for that high a price for a book that expires in 8 months. Since the DRM essentially prevents unauthorized transfers, that should be sufficient.