Why do college text books ram you up the ass with their cost?

[graywarrior]

WTF? I should go into THAT business instead of going to school.

[HopeHoops]

1. $170 for a used text book?

WTF? Apparently that isn't even CLOSE to as expensive as USED books can get. The new ones seem to have no bounds in cost.

[graywarrior]

2. It's text book prostitution!

[HopeHoops]

3. Nah, I checked.

No nudie pics.

[hatredisnotavalue]

4. Have you considered renting a textbook?

http://www.chegg.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=renting%20college%20books&utm_campaign=rental

I sent my daughter this link and she is looking in to it. She was very excited about it.

[graywarrior]

6. I entered the ISBN # and they didn't have it.

Damn book cost me $59 and it's a spiral book! ! ! !

[tinkerbell41]

44. Thanks

I just checked into selling my daughters books to them. They have been collecting dust since Jan bookstore wouldn't buy them back, but Chegg will take 2. I will take a credit to use for next semester, what a wonderful idea. I love DU!!

[LostInAnomie]

5. The fucking worst is when the professor writes his own book...

... then forces you to buy it for his class. Oh, then he updates it every year so the bookstore won't buy it back.

[graywarrior]

7. I think that's what this is!

[EFerrari]

8. It's one of BusCo's franchises. Go figure.

[graywarrior]

9. Bastids.

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

10. Because It's a racket and students are willing to pay

just like health care. You gotta have them fucking books so what you gonna do about it? They keep bringing out new editions every year too so you gotta buy the "newest." I say fuck em. When I was at University we got together in study groups to use our books collectively and compared our version with the rich kids with the newest editions. There were NO differences in the books besides maybe a picture or two. Nothing else. Buy them used and use the internet for any additional information.

[graywarrior]

13. Yeah, that's what I figured.

I guess I'll sell mine back to the bookstore at the end of this semester and find out how to get used books for next semester.

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

17. The sad fact is

the lousy bookstore which sold you the original book for 250.00 will buy it back for 25 bucks. Try to get them used and online. Good luck Gray. I'm glad you are going back to school! :hi:

[graywarrior]

25. Thanks!

:toast:

[Blue_Tires]

55. that's the part that ALWAYS pissed me off the most...

buy back a $250 book for $25, then the next day you see it on the "used" shelf for $200

[Broken_Hero]

61. agreed on that aspect,

the buy back price was such a joke, it was worth it to me, to just keep it, or give it away to someone who needed it...

[Orrex]

22. "Willing to pay" is a questionable description

In many cases it's more like "buy the book or you simply won't pass the course." So yes, the students are "willing" to pay for the text insofar as they're "willing" to do it to pass the course, but that's different from spying a $170 book on a shelf and say "I'll buy that because I don't mind paying that much for it, even though I don't actually need it."

The books themselves are only part of the problem. A lot of texts include single-use software or one-time-only workbooks that can't be resold, borrowed, or used by a group.

Sickeningly, you're 100% correct about the minimal changes in the books from one semester to the next. I've read of cases in which the only change was in the number of blank endpages! I often wondered what changed about The Complete Works of Shakespeare in the space of just three months, but The Bard must somehow keep coming up with revision-worthy changes to his catalog eacy semester...

[PVnRT]

40. Willing? Not really.

Have to or else is more like it.

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

65. You are right of course

willing is not the word I should have used. They are unwilling participants and have no other choice but to buy the newest edition, according to their professor's orders.

[JTG of the PRB]

11. Because they can.

One of the worst rackets in the country is college text books. When I was a freshman, I took a German class - $350 for TWO FREAKING BOOKS.

[graywarrior]

12. Hell, Rosetta Stone is cheaper.

[JTG of the PRB]

14. PLUS, I barely remember any of the German I learned.

That's what I get for taking five years of Spanish, then two years of German, and majoring in English Lit. I don't know WHAT language I speak anymore.

[graywarrior]

15. That's pretty obvious here.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:hide:

[JTG of the PRB]

24. Ohhhhhhhhh SNAP!

:P








:rofl:

[Kajsa]

16. It's highway robbery,Gray.

My son's going through that sticker shock today, too.

:(

[graywarrior]

26. It is shocking.

I saw a girl paying over $400 for books today. Hell, a 3 credit course at the community college is cheaper. What a ripoff.

[MichiganVote]

18. Because they can.

[Drunken Irishman]

19. Locking.

This post is entirely inappropriate.
It's not just sexist, it's borderline disgusting.

[Orrex]

23. Yeah, but what about the OP?

[graywarrior]

28. I AM borderline disgusting and proud of it ! ! !

[graywarrior]

27. .

[Orrex]

33. Suddenly, I've totally forgotten what this thread was about...

[graywarrior]

37. Glad I could help.

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. thread title made me laugh a bit.

[RiffRandell]

20. No kidding!

I went back to school a year ago and pay full tuition because the Hope scholarship capped out at 90 hours (I took like 80 hours at CT schools, and they transfer ALL of them, regardless of grade) but ONLY 33 CREDITS transfered.

With books, it costs me almost $1000.00 for 1 class.

If you need an American history book until 1877, PM me. I paid like 50 bucks for it and was too late in selling it back; bookstore said they would give me 10 bucks for it. I kept it as I would rather just give it to someone.

[graywarrior]

29. My two writing course books cost me $93.

They're skinny little books for crissakes!

[XemaSab]

21. Seriously

5 hours a week of taking it in the ass would MORE than cover the costs of the books. :P

[graywarrior]

30. Maybe I should consider that.

[JCMach1]

39. You might just try leasing a Xerox machine

would the same or cheaper I think...

[undeterred]

31. They've been getting away with it forever.

I went to a huge state school where there were hundreds, if not thousands, enrolled in freshman classes like Chem 101 or Biology 110. The course wouldn't be offered again until the following fall. And by then they'd have a different text book so that you couldn't sell yours back. Even the used bookstores don't want them.

[seaker]

34. $ 700.00

For my son's 3 classes!

[graywarrior]

36. Robbery.

And in most cases, Pell Grants will not pay for all books.

[armyowalgreens]

59. That's pretty bad. I paid 700 dollars for 18 credit hours worth of class.

Which is equivalent to 6 classes.

[Strong Atheist]

35. It's been like that forevah... nt.

[JCMach1]

38. I was almost always $500 a semester for me back in the 1980's

Hate to see the prices now.

[graywarrior]

41. We should protest in the streets!

[raccoon]

42. This has been going on for decades. It p'd me off in the late 1960's.

One of my co-workers saves money by buying his textbooks online.

[AngryAmish]

43. 1. Get a friend to buy the book

2. Get a scanner

3. Scan the book.

4. Profit?

[Highway61]

45. Chegg.com

Great site for used books for WAY less...you can sell them when your done at this site as well.

Another site for books if you have good ones to sell is cash4books.net. Type in the ISBN numbers (which you'll fine on the back cover or copyright page) and see if you'll get cash for them. Complete the transaction on line, print out a prepaid mailing label, pack them up and send them in. In a few days you will receive a check in the mail. You won't pay a cent...not even for postage.

[MissMillie]

46. because they're probably going to be out of date in 2 years

that whole thing where Pluto was a planet, then not, then yes.... and think of what happened to geography books after the fall of the Soviet Union.

[mysuzuki2]

47. To put it in historical perspective

my first semester in college was in 1966. I took 5 courses and my books, along with notebooks, pens etc was about $30.00. It seemed a lot of money at the time. I remember being outraged that I had to pay $1.50 for a paperback copy of Suetonius' "Lives of the Ceasars".

[Xithras]

48. High production costs + limited runs = expensive books.

You can buy a paperback for $6.99 at the grocery store because it's black & white, doesn't include supplementary DVD's, they're running off a million of them, and they will have it in print for the next 10 years. Costs are low, and recovery time is long, so it can be sold cheaply.

College textbooks tend to be full color, have tons of supplementary materials, have a useful life of only a few years, and are printed in very limited runs. Some textbooks have runs of only a few thousand copies, and very few have more than a few hundred thousand printed before their retirement. The backend production costs have to be piled into fewer copies, which means higher per-book costs.

I guess they should fire all the union workers and instead bring in cheap illegals, or just outsource the book production to China, to make all the college kids happy. Time to WalMart-ize higher ed! Fuck the worker, give me cheap books! /sarc

[graywarrior]

49. Hell, we could read those fuckers online instead.

[Xithras]

52. Electronic textbooks generally suck.

Ever try to dogear or bookmark pages in an electronic textbook? Nobody has yet figured out a way to make the ebook experience similar to the paper book experience.

And roughly half my lectures end with the phrase, "...and now class, please open your textbooks to..."

Opening your textbook is kind of difficult when it's a PDF file on your computer back in your dorm room.

Plus, let's not forget batteries. My weekly evening classes are three hours long, so very few laptops are operable over the course of the entire class. My daily 90 minute classes are more manageable, but not many fulltime students have time to run back to their dorms to recharge between classes.

[graywarrior]

53. We're doomed.

[Xithras]

56. Nah, someone will eventually develop a decent e-textbook.

The fact that nobody has managed to do so yet doesn't mean that nobody ever will. It just means that students TODAY are stuck with overpriced books.

[graywarrior]

58. We should develop one

But I'm a slacker, so there goes that idea.

[Xithras]

60. I've been noodling a few ideas around on one.

I teach CS and have a strong background in electronics, and it's something I've seriously thought about. The problem is that my concepts end up being very expensive in their own right.

Would you spend $500 on a really good full color e-textbook, if you could use it throughout your college career and the actual "titles" only cost you an additional $40-$50 per class? What if that e-textbook could also read doc files, PDF's, play media, and browse the web?

Most people say no.

[graywarrior]

64. Keep working on it.

[Patiod]

62. Good analysis

(And this comes from someone who used to do work for Simon & Schuster Ed Pub)

So here's your lethal combination:

Professors who can make more money coming out with a new book every so often
High production cost + limited runs
Captive market

[Xithras]

63. I hear it from my students every semester.

Most instructors would love to offer their students cheap or free textbooks, but it's uncommon for mass market titles to adequately cover all of the material normally taught in a college level class. My students complain every semester about their $140 textbooks.

[Deep13]

50. Because they can. nt

[dembotoz]

51. college bookstores must generate a lot of cash per square foot.

ya know they ain't selling stuff at their cost.
Standard markup on a 100 dollar text must be a nice chunk of change.
when i was in school we had text rentals (long time ago --rode dinosaurs to class....)
did not really realize what a true blessing that was.

[smoochpooch]

54. You can always split the cost with a classmate. Also, depending on the class,

you can sometimes get away with not buying the book at all. I know in some of my writing classes I bought books that were totally unnecessary. It's a risk, but it may be worth it.

[armyowalgreens]

57. 700 dollars for my books this semester.

My french book alone was 200 dollars,

[graywarrior]

66. Que le fait de baiser ?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: