celestiaequestria t1_iszp8ap wrote on October 19, 2022 at 9:39 PM

Reply to comment by ExperienceKCC in TIL the price of textbooks increases by an average of 12% with each new edition by ExperienceKCC

The publishers have put themselves in a self-defeating position. If the textbooks were $50, people would grumble and buy them. If they're $400, people are going to do everything in their power to not have to get that book. Download a PDF and pay $100 for the dumb online homework key? Still better than paying $400 for the book that'll wind up being used to line the bottom of a bird cage because it's worthless once the shrinkwrap is off.

AdClemson t1_it36a7j wrote on October 20, 2022 at 4:27 PM

They basically priced themselves out with greed. Even $50 would net them nice profit per book but they just wanted to squeeze as much money as possible from students and ended up destroying their own business in long term.

edamcheeze t1_it3mg5i wrote on October 20, 2022 at 6:11 PM

I had a professor in college who sold his textbooks at around ~$60 each and said he was getting $30k a year from it. He co-authored it with someone else and I'm sure the platform he was using took a big chunk of the profits, but even so, $30k is still a fuck ton of money. Professors who force students to buy their textbooks at several hundred dollars are absolute greedy scum.

LurksAroundHere t1_it3w2uc wrote on October 20, 2022 at 7:13 PM

On the flip side I luckily had a good professor and he encouraged his students to buy older used versions of the textbooks required for class, even going as far to bring out the old and new textbooks and flip through them to show us that they literally had the same material, just that the "updated" more expensive version had the same chapters put on different pages. Had a lot of respect for him.