Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
As a former textbook author myself, I completely understand your viewpoint. The issue with textbooks is that:
1. They are EXTREMELY expensive to publish.
2. They have a VERY limited market.
Each copy that's sold therefore has to fund a large proportion of the production costs.
Sales of 5000 copies of a fiction book would be regarded as a miserable failure. Sales of 5000 copies of a textbook would be a major success.
That's why - in my student days, at least - many people bought their textbooks 2nd hand.
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According to this
site there are ~70 colleges in the U.S. that have an aerospace degree program. There were ~40 students in my aerodynamics class, so that's 2800 students a year, assuming they only offer the class once and all classrooms are the same size. That's also ignoring
aeronautical degree programs, or any other programs of study that may require it (such as flight school, automotive racing, etc.). There are more aeronautical programs than aerospace, by the way, so there are
more than 5,000 students (in the US alone) that have to purchase a text every year.
I can understand near $200, or even more, for a graduate level text in the art of the Somali Bantu, but not in even a relatively esoteric course such as aerodynamics at the undergraduate level.
With regard to 2nd hand texts, they don't help when the @sshole publishers update the edition every year or two.