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The sheet compares the publication cost of two books, an unidentified Chemistry book and Thoreau's: Walden.
The number of free samples produced was impressive. In this example Prentice-Hall.
provides the production costs for a 30,000 copy run. For each 30,000 books produced they have an estimated 6500 free samples. That is a healthy chunk of change going to providing something to professors for free. Of course these costs are inevitably passed on to the student while often the professor sells the desk copy back and makes money. Publication cost comparison Prentice-Hall
Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, provides these Top Ten No Sympathy Lines (Plus a Few Extra) which is a list of his answers to common student questions.
A good one from the list...
Do I Need to Know This?
You can survive without the things you learn in college. People survive scrounging out of dumpsters and sleeping in doorways. If you want to talk about quality of life, we need to be a bit more demanding.
An Inside Higher Ed article on the New Federal report that covers the "rising cost of textbooks"
People have provided many good comments on this post with different insights on why textbooks cost what they cost.
A sample from screename UCprof
It’s interesting that the GAO report showed a 6% yearly rise in the cost of textbooks between 1986 and 2004, compared to a 7% rise in tuition and fees. One wonders why congress isn’t investigating those much larger and more significant increases.
