Can someone explain to me why college textbooks are ridiculously costly ?

[CRGreathouse]

I'm inclined to blame the departments.
I assumed they were getting some sort of kick-back from the publishers - but I think it's just the taking over of higher education by MBA management types.

I would expect this to be an inefficient transfer. That is, for the department to get a kickback valued at $1000 it would need to sell tens of thousands of dollars of textbooks to students. It would seem that a higher tuition coupled with cheaper textbooks would allow a Pareto improvement (viewing only colleges and students, not publishers, as players).

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'm inclined to blame the departments.
I assumed they were getting some sort of kick-back from the publishers

That's just not possible. When I was a graduate student, the bookstore sold 5 or 6 copies of Jackson at $45 each: the rest were hand-me-downs, library copies, or bootleg copies from China or India. With $270 flowing into the system, how much was left for bribery? $20? $30?

Even Physics 101 won't work - imagine 500 students at $100 a copy, and the department skims 10% off the top: that's a whopping $5000, on a budget of many millions.

 

[story645]

When we see a "napster" for college textbooks: then maybe the price will fall.

There are tons of textbooks floating around on the torrent hubs. Most of the guys in my courses used ebook versions of the texts, but many of my professors also don't require students to purchase the book/are fine with students buying older editions.

The only textbook that I ever really hated buying was the one a professor wrote and forced us to buy. (I admire colleges who have rules against that sort of thing.) He counted attendance and wouldn't mark a student present if they didn't have the book with them in class. The book was also terrible, utterly incomprehensible for freshman/sophomores (the audience required to buy it.)

 

[mgb_phys]

Even Physics 101 won't work - imagine 500 students at $100 a copy, and the department skims 10% off the top: that's a whopping $5000, on a budget of many millions.

I was assuming something more along the lines of the drug companies.
An invite to the launch of the publishers latest textbook (in say Las Vegas) in return for setting that publisher's textbooks for all your courses.
Cost to publisher $500, sales by publisher $50K

As I say though I think it's more stupidity/management consultancy

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I don't think paying the authors is a big part of textbook costs.

The average writer in general does not make enough money to live on. Anything over 10% of the cost of a book going to an author is a pretty significant sum (per book) as far as I know. On average a decent author may make 12-15% royalties but that is based on profits not the price of the book. Perhaps I am misinterpreting the information in the paper though or maybe the author of the paper misinterpreted how royalties work.

 

[Pinu7]

When we see a "napster" for college textbooks: then maybe the price will fall.

It is not hard at all to go to the internet and download, illegally, textbooks and monographs, especially for the technical subjects. You would be surprised how much people do it.

Many developing countries(like China) have printing presses in which they take these books off the internet and sell these reprinted scans for 95% below the cost.

In my opinion, textbooks prices HAVE to be lowered or publishing companies(that are not Dover) will go bankrupt. Today, we live in a world where quality knowledge is so easily available that the need to buy a book is less.