“So why are textbooks so expensive now? Perhaps bookstore companies know that many students are lacking funds and have to depend on federal and state student aid.”

Replace “textbooks” with “tuition” and “bookstore companies” with “Universities.”

The price of a book is figured at the cost to print the book, cost of printers, editors, and a royalty to the authors, and the number of books assumed will be sold (supply and demand). Books with illustrations and / or footnotes, bibliography cost even more to produce, but without them the reliability of any argument is questionable. Then there is the cost the store assumes when buying (outright or on consignment) from a publisher, and the store must consider labor costs, utilities, and all other costs. Generally it comes down to this: 30% to 50% of the list price goes to the store to meet its costs and to make a profit; from the other 50% is all of the production, transportation, and labor costs plus royalty. Fictional “best sellers” are more costly in hardcover than paperback, and they sell millions of copies, but a textbook on calculus will sell at most 10,000 copies, thus they are more costly.

I buy books, and one “textbook” purchased recently cost me over $1200—it was imported (Brill) and only 100 copies were printed. Scientific, medical, and similar material has a lower demand and thus the cost is greater.

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“1) take a different subject, (2) visit a poor nation where the book costs as much as one month of more salary of one wage earner who usually is married and has a family…(3) or boycott the book and watch the publisher go out of business, author(s) stop writing, etc…”

Ok, I’ll change my major to Exercise Science after I come back from my trip to a poor nation and after I’m done writing my “sorry for making you broke” letter to the publishers.

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Why are textbooks so expensive? GREED

The ideal solution would be to digitally copy and freely distribute the textbooks. I hope someone is already doing this. I would love to be able to just search up to a torrent for whatever I needed for class. If I had the required software I would consider doing this myself.

We all agree that textbook expenses have risen too high, in the face of sinking student graduation rates and extended student time in the university, it hardly makes sense to continue to raise text book prices. The prices are artificially high, the cost of writing and printing these books is not higher than any other printed book material. Additionally there’s little reason to require a new updated text book each year, that’s typically just part of the scam.

However, there’s no basis to “freely distribute” text books or anything else for that matter. This is a naive and immature idea based on the concept of illegally functioning inside a societal system, and does not represent an alternative concept for resolution of the issue.

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The present intellectual property regime turns abundance into scarcity and is thus profoundly irrational for the common good. It should be opposed at every turn. It’s already easy to torrent movies and such; sooner or later textbooks will be in the same category.

intellectual property is easily dissed by those whose only ideas always involve criminal activity. As an avid supporter of illegal immigration perhaps Summerspeaker assisted the illegal immigrant who recently murdered the young mother and baby here in New Mexico. Get some new materail SS

The true way to solve the problem is buying those alternative version. I use http://www.booksbridge.com to purchase international edition textbooks last semesters and save up to 75% of total cost! and yes, it is legal to do that .Those books have the same contents and only difference is softcover , yeah I know the softcover is softcover but who cares, I really want to save and I gonna tell my friends about this

The true way to solve the problem is buying those alternative version. I use BooksBridge.com to purchase international edition textbooks last semesters and save up to 75% of total cost! and yes, it is legal to do that .Those books have the same contents and only difference is softcover , yeah I know the softcover is softcover but who cares, I really want to save and I gonna tell my friends about this