I received a free copy in the mail of an introductory statistics textbook; I guess the publisher wants me to adopt it for my courses….I showed the book to Yu-Sung and he said: Wow, it’s pretty fancy. I bet it costs $150. I didn’t believe him, but we checked on Amazon and lo! it really does retail for that much. What the….? I asked around and, indeed, it’s commonplace for students to pay well over $100 for introductory textbooks.
Andrew wants to know why textbooks are so expensive. Henry Farrell too. Add me to the list.
I’ve heard various explanations for the skyrocketing cost of textbooks. They’re bigger these days. They use more color. They include CDs and multimedia bells and whistles. Etc.
But here’s a data point. I only have one of my college textbooks still in my possession, but I just got it off the shelf to see if it had a price in it. It did: $17.25. That was in 1976, and adjusted for inflation it comes to $64 in today’s dollars. So what does it currently cost on Amazon? Answer: $132. It is, as near as I can tell, the exact same book. Same binding, same number of pages, same charming lack of color. In fact, browsing through it, it looks as if it’s being printed from the same plates as it was in 1976.
This, then, is obviously a book that ought to be cheaper today than it was three decades ago. The costs of production have long since been paid back, there’s a ton of competition from the used book market since the book hasn’t changed in 30 years, and I imagine that author royalties are the same as ever. For reference, a similar size commercial hardback would run about $40 these days.
So what is the deal? Why are textbooks such a ripoff?
