Comments on: Sticker shock

By: Lee Scoresby

Lee Scoresby — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 19:48:50 +0000

I just got off the phone with Ken Waltz. The price has nothing to do with his lack of royalties on earlier books. He wants the book to be cheaper, on the grounds that an academic should want as many people as possible to read his or her book. TIP, however, is published by the textbook division. Ken can’t get a clear answer about why it is priced the way it is, so I suspect the arguments about textbook pricing and inelasticity (real or perceived) are at work.

By: Nicholas Weininger

Nicholas Weininger — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 19:23:09 +0000

arbitraryaardvark: agree re open-source textbooks. A long-term project idea of mine is to make a serious stab at putting together a usable open-source calculus book. Calculus books, BTW, are a terrific example of Alex Tabarrok’s point, much better than any grad-level book could be. They are very substitutable—one book will cover pretty much the same stuff as any other in pretty much the same way. And the market is huge. So they should be a commodity good with elastic demand. But they’re not; they’re eye-poppingly expensive, and the publishers, as Sebastian mentioned, introduce pseudo-new editions every few years to cut the legs off the used market. And it seems to me the principal reason that this works is just what Tabarrok says: the chooser and the payer are not the same and do not really have the same interests.

By: Alan Bostick

Alan Bostick — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 17:27:57 +0000

The US tax code might maybe possibly have a little bit to do with the situation. Try googling on Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue; you may find the results enlightening.

By: arbitraryaardvark

arbitraryaardvark — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 04:35:26 +0000

factors affecting supply curve: cost of the first copy: did the guy write it for publish or perish reasons, or does he make a living as a writer? cost of the next copy – a cd version’s marginal cost would be about $1. factors affecting demand curve: options may include sharing with a buddy, using the library copy, getting by with a previous edition, using a pirated copy, dropping the class, taking the class without buying the book, convincing the professor to use a cheaper book. engineering books costs a lot because they are tools of the trade, means of production. but similar texts compete. here, if there is a monopoly in one book that is in fashion, there are fewer substitute goods. I forsee a coming revolution in open-source textbooks for many college classes. If your course doesn’t have one, make that the semester project. But if the lucrative textbook racket is busted up, other forms of income enhancement may crop up. There may be some parts of graduate education that are not readily captured by a good online tutorial, and it is worth finding out more explicitly what those are.

By: rzg

rzg — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 20:50:31 +0000

The big dogs/superstars do have some control over price, should they chose to exercise it. When Steve Gould published his final magnum opus on Evolutionary Theory (an academic/text book), clocking in at nearly 1500 pages, he wanted a price less than $40, and the publisher, Belknap, agreed. I suspect that there is elasticity in demand for scholarly books as evidenced by the price/success of Hawking, Dawkins, etc.

By: Nate

Nate — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 14:59:51 +0000

There’s always my solution to the problem. I photocopied the book and used a bound photocopied version for several years. Then, I found, by complete fortuity, a $6 copy in a used bookstore one night, and even though it had some highlighting, I snatched it up. But I’ve photocopied a few books whose price is inordinately high. I could never see paying $75 for a 150 page paperback.

By: cheem

cheem — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 06:07:03 +0000

Gotta agree with njorl. $75 for a textbook is a bargain. Ashcroft and Mermin’s Solid State Physics? $127.95 from Amazon. Buying it from the college bookstore, it’s more like $180. Rudin’s Principles of Mathematical Analysis? $133 from Amazon. For a 340 page book. You folks in IR get off easy.

By: artclone

artclone — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 03:33:05 +0000

61 “unread” copies on eBay for 17 bucks each plus shipping.

By: mark

mark — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 01:51:38 +0000

jEEEzus. That Waltz’s book commands that kind of price puts me in mind of the overpriced grilled cheese sandwich we were hearing about recently. Although a partially eaten, decade-old, dubiously blessed scorched amalgam of wonderbread and velveeta is probably the more intellectually rewarding of the two. Mysterious ways indeed. Mark

By: ogmb

ogmb — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 23:33:42 +0000

One of the more quixotic aspects of the U.S. secondary education system. My experience at a German university was: 1. Professors offer a list of relevant textbooks that cover the material (there are many many books to choose from in intro/intermediate undergrad classes) rather than assign one. Homework problems are written by TAs rather than taken from the book. 2. University libraries have multiple copies of the most relevant books. 3. Professors or student associations sell typewritten lecture notes plus old exams at a token price (about $5-10). The upshot is that any faculty should provide various means to acquire the material and aide (force) the students to find the optimal one. Being able to find good resources and separate them from the bad is a key learning experience, and it’s not accomplished if the instructor short-circuits the process and burdens the students with the costs.

By: Jackmormon

Jackmormon — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 23:16:25 +0000

Still a lowly graduate student myself, my impression is that the faculty is able to request (read, “insist”) that the library purchase books like this. And my experience has been that the professor will then check out the book for a semester or two, and every time the library requests its return, the professor will send out his or her assistant to renew it. Thus, perhaps, causing the library to invest in a second copy, as the book is clearly very popular… (I’m not saying that many professors won’t buy the expensive books in their field, but the filtering of these costs through the research libraries must intensify the inelasticity-of-demand effect.)

By: Giles

Giles — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 22:18:33 +0000

Looking at the BTW, $75 for a textbook is cheap. I checked the prices of my old physics texts, and their ranging from $80 for the Stat Mech to $186 for the 2 volume Cohen-Tannoudji Quantum book.

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 20:45:54 +0000

One other thing which I should mention is that in all fairness, academic presses do run a loss on a lot of their books, so to the extent that they have to cross-subsidize, the priciness of ToIP and other similar books is probably understandable.

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 20:01:13 +0000

Jacob – It’s an absolutely essential book for international relations scholars in general – probably the most influential (and controversial) book that’s been written in the field in the last forty years. Indeed, there are large chunks of it which are available in the “Neo-realism and its critics” volume which is, I suspect, what gets assigned to most graduate level courses, because of these price considerations. But most international relations professors – and a fair number of IR professionals – feel that they have to have it on their shelves.