Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The problem is though, speaking as a former textbook author myself, that textbooks are very expensive to produce, and have a very small target audience, which is not particularly price-sensitive. Halve the price of a textbook, and you probably won't sell noticeably more copies. I'm afraid the economics of textbook publishing mean that you're never going to see $10 physics textbooks (my former field).
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Even back in the dark ages when I was in college, many people bought used textbooks and then sold them back to the book store at the end of each year. So you can't go by past numbers for actual sales. The same text book would be sold once new (generating a royalty) and then 5 - 6 times as used.
Cut the price to that half those people buy them outright and keep them, and you will increase sales by 3 - 4 times (accounting for those who bought and kept anyway).
And no, not $10, but $100+ is nuts.