Ok, it is time for me to start my annual textbook rant and how it reflects the things that are wrong with American society.
My total tally for textbooks = $385. Yea I know, I know, professors spent a BIG time investment in writing this really informative text along with the time spent for peer review, setting up stuff on the web, etc. Yea, load of crap… like the rest of humanity they probably procrastinated to the last month, and publish a crappy first edition, to improve the things that should have been done in the first edition in edition 2.
A friend of mine who is an education PhD was showing me some sample textbooks he aquired from his trips to China, South Korea, and Japan (related to her research somehow). There is really a stark difference. The Asian college and HS level texts contain definitely less pictures… more actual content. Knowing some of the people I went to high school and college with this probably would not have worked here lol. But it made me think about why the heck our texts are so expensive.
Honestly… there is so much junk in our textbooks, with unnecessary photos/pictures (each of which probably has a royalty fee associated with). If you were to just take the text, and the diagrams, graphs, and photos that were actually meaningful… you could reduce the size of the textbook by 1/2. My assumption here is that size & pages do play a role in the exhorbitant cost of this stuff.
I am here staring at an introductory Biology text from Hong Kong… 1/2 the size and page count, lacks the hard cover, but I’m not taking my texts to a warzone so that’s not really a factor. Overall, very organized, there are graphs and diagrams where they’re needed… now I look over to my intro Bio text at a photo of 1 turtle humping another, and say to myself… wow, just wow (in reference to the differences in text, not the turtles). I agree that some courses like Orgo are more visually oriented… but 90% of the texts I’ve seen use excessive filler material presumably to up the page count. I mean, seriously, I think Newton was a good guy, but I don’t need his picture to occupy 1/4 of a page with a bio that I can readily obtain on wiki.
The whole textbook industry is another example of the “American Culture of Waste(ist).” SUV’s, Giganto Houses, Fast Food,etc. At the end of the day, it is just about another guy getting rich, and another student on a tight budget not getting the education they deserve.
I agree that intellectual capital is a very precious resource, and we should reward professors and other academics with their knowledge… but I have yet to find one thing on any of my premed courses that I can’t locate with a free resource.
Could you send me a picture of the turtles? I have always wondered about that. 
I have several textbook pet peeves. One is the “bundled” courseware that always ends up costing significantly more than just the text (and you almost never use the bundled stuff). Another is the ridiculous amount of money the bookstores give you when they buy back your texts vs. what they sell used texts for. Putting out new editions is another significant pet peeve - most of the reason publishers put out new editions every so many years is because the market becomes saturated with old editions, so in order to make more money, they have to put out new books.
The professors themselves don’t typically make that much money out of the total cost of the text. I have had a couple professors who wanted us to use texts that they had written. Both of them stated that if you brought them your receipt verifying that you purchased the book new, they would give you the money they would have made off the book (in order to avoid a conflict of interest). In both cases, I think their profit was around $6.
There is also a market difference. On a couple of occasions, I have bought international editions of my exact same textbook, and it was page-for-page identical for half price or less. Textbook publishing does seem to me to be something of a racket, and I have heard faculty complain that the publishers yank perfectly good editions off the market to force them to adopt new editions with few, if any, real changes.
I buy used where possible, or international editions, or, now that I’m in med school and it’s feasible, I use copies that are on reserve in the library or use previous, but recent, editions since there aren’t homework problems that depend on having the same problem numbers as the syllabus. abebooks.com is my major online textbook source and it’s saved me a bundle.
My turn to pitch in and cry foul about the BS of textbook cost. My term cost me $701.22 in books. I’m telling you, this truly is the fleecing of the American student. It’s a joke. And like above mentioned, it pisses me off to no end all the useless s*** they put in these book bundles. Help-ware, “selected” solutions manuals, etc. I am so fed up with book costs it’s stupid. The only saving grace, if there is any, the only silver lining in the cloud, if there is any, is that I can use my books for Chem II & Physics II. So really, if you want to think of it as chopping the cost in half. Plus I have to still buy lab manuals (another $50 or so).
And what is REALLY a slap in the face is if you decide to sell your books back to the bookstore, the piddly amount they give you for it versus what they turn around and sell it for. I have an old Biology book here that I paid like $185 for new and used it for 1 term. I went to sell it back, in excellent condition and they wanted to give me $45 for it. Yes, $45. I told the lady behind the counter that I’d take the thing outside, piss on it & set it on fire for my own entertainment before I GAVE it back to them for that amount of money. She was not amused and nor was I.
Ok, I’m off my soapbox. Check back with me next term and I’ll be on it again. 
-Justin
- Justso Said:
Not really relevant (I will chime in though that textbook prices/sellback value is ridiculous) but you wouldn't have happened to have videotaped that exchange?
I would probably die laughing at the look on her face.
Well, the bookstore employees aren’t at a level where they can do much about these things. And one reason used book prices are so awful is that faculty don’t turn in next semester’s textbook adoption information on time all across the country, so demand at the time of buyback is artifically depressed and then inflated when the adoptions finely show up and bookstores all scramble to get the books.
The other thing I would note is that sometimes you don’t have to buy the whole fancy set to be successful in a course. You can buy the main textbook and the solution manual and be just fine, and you can buy these things separately somewhere other than the bookstore.
- Justso Said:
You sir... are made of win.
I paid full price the first couple of semesters, then discovered the international editions (see abebooks.com) and used copies on Amazon.com. Typically you can save about half, and when you’re done with the book you can put it for sale on Amazon and get some of your money back. I sold several books that way, lightening my bookshelf and making me a couple hundred bucks richer. Amazon makes the process very easy. Just remember that anything you do to the book–highlighting, opening the CD, rubbing off the online access code–decreases its value to the buyer.
You can also save a bundle on previous editions. Ask the prof how much it’s changed–except for biological topics, typically the science has not changed, only the page numbers–and ask if they can post the previous edition’s page numbers in reading assignments. Some of them do that.
Then there’s the library; typically the texts will be on reserve and you can sometimes get away without buying them if they’re available when you’re able to be there. Good luck!
Another resource for buying/selling books is half.com . I have purchased and sold a number of books through there, as well as amazon.
- Justso Said:
-Justin
If your pee is flammable, someone at this forum might be able to help. Then again, perhaps not
.I remember some comedian going off on how great it is to take a semester-long economics course to learn that your $175 textook is now worth 37 cents. It was funny until I saw my textbook bill.
Other sites I'd recommend:
textbooksrus.com - I've bought a number of international editions from here, and everything's gone smoothly.
campusi.com - searches text prices for you (from half.com, textbooksrus, abebooks, etc).
I don’t think any ONE individual is getting rich off of text books. I’ve written a couple of books for the web design market and the money boils down to less than minimum wage on a per hour basis.
I was offered a chance to write a text book on the same subject and the money wasn’t much better. As some eluded to earlier, the payback would be in making revisions for future editions…IF the book stays on the market long enough.
From the publisher’s POV, it’s a very competitive market and it appears as if there is a lot of money invested in putting a book together. Looking at my current chem I-II book, there are a half a gazillion reviewers and contributors…all paid for their time.
This is not to discount (get it?) the fact that what we pay is hard on the pocketbook. It’s even harder when you hardly use the book during a semester.
Hopefully, as more content becomes available online the cost savings will be passed along to us.
Hey, I can dream, right? 
hak