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

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Books are so incredibly, ridiculously expensive in Sweden. That was one of my bits of advice to those students who came after me: you can buy everything in Sweden except your textbooks; buy those at home. I'm thinking of carting a suitcase of paperbacks to Geneva with me as a donation to the CERN library. Moe's Books on Telegraph is a wonderful, wonderful place.