Why are textbooks so expensive?

[nibot]

To: Editors, Academic Press
Subj: Why are books so expensive?

I've recently been wondering what it is that makes mathematics textbooks so expensive. For example, Enderton's book Elements of Set Theory, far from the most egregious example, costs more than $100 in our campus book store. It can't be printing an d distribution alone that account for this enormous cost -- similarly sized books often cost less than $20. The typesetting is more complex than books in many other fields (such as those books that contain only prose) yet even this must have been paid for long ago -- the book was originally published in 1977. I wonder if you could estimate, for my own curiosity, how much of the $100 textbook cost goes to the reseller, how much goes for distribution, how much for the direct publication costs, what percent goes to the author as royalty, etc.

thank you,
Tobin Fricke

EDIT: They responded!

Comments

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I believe academic books are substantially more expensive than non-academic books mainly because of the smaller numbers involved. When each book sells a million copies, you can afford to make only 10 cents on each book, but if there are only a couple thousand copies in circulation, then all the fixed costs require more markup on each individual book.

Of course, this doesn't explain the whole phenomenon. In market terms, I think the demand curve for academic books is less elastic than the curve for non-academic books, as there's often no competition. I mean, what other book would you get if you thought Enderton was too expensive? And because I can't find a copy of Kunen's Set Theory anywhere (even from the publisher) someone thinks it's plausible to sell a used copy for $120, when the original only cost $60!

[nibot.livejournal.com]

That's how the theory usually goes, but I don't really believe it. One would think that the fixed costs of a decently successful book would be covered after being in print for a quarter century. I can manually photocopy Enderton's book (which I intend to do, actually) for less than $7. I wonder what the per-book royalty to an author is... If you have any math prof associates who've published books, can you ask them?