text book prices...why? Options

[brooklyneast05]

i don't get why text books are so expensive. i just bought this art history book that is 116 dollars, but i don't understand WHY it costs so much. it's a decent sized book, but it's not huge. what i don't get is...say you go into a regular book store like barnes and noble and you buy a book with art history in it, why isn't it as expensive?

when you go into a book store, rarely do i see any books costing 116 dollars. so what makes text books of equal size cost more?


don't tell me how i can go buy them cheaper balbalbaabl, i'm not asking about buying them cheaper. i'm asking what makes text books like this cost so much more than just a regular book that's similar in size and stuff?

[mipadi]

Simple: demand. You need that textbook, right? So does everyone else in your class. Hell, probably thousands of other students in American universities need that textbook, too. You have no choice: no choice in whether to buy it or not*, and no choice in what book to buy, if you do decide to buy one.

Plus there's additional costs. For one thing, textbook companies ship dozens of books to professors every semester in the hopes they'll use it for their classes (check out a typical professor's office -- he'll have several bookcases full of books, and that hawking of textbooks is partly the reason). That costs a lot of money, too.


* I guess technically you could choose not to buy it and find "workarounds", but for the purposes of this conversation, assume you have to buy it.