Textbook Prices - One Nasty Reason They Are So High

College students are not generally associated with great wealth. Most are just getting by and eating a lot of Mac and cheese while they undertake their higher education. It is then very odd that the cost of textbooks for college are so expensive. The reason is why? The answers are many, but there is one nasty little reason that really drives the price high.

Textbooks

Let's say that you want to find a book to read for the pure joy of it, i.e. not a textbook! You might pop onto Amazon or go strolling through a local brick and mortar bookstore. As you browsed, you would have the ability to choose among the different authors, titles and subjects. Price is rarely a major issue because all the books are within a certain range of each other. If you found one that was priced at 0, you would not buy it. In fact, you would probably show it to other people in the store in amazement.

As every college student knows, textbooks can be in the hundreds of dollars. What is the big difference? Well, it is a very simple capitalism issue - choice. In our previous example, you could just choose whatever book you liked. If the price was to high, you simply could go with a different title that was reasonably priced. This is not the case with textbooks. If you want to take the course or are required to, you must buy the textbook in question. Given this, prices can be arbitrarily set.

Ah, but there is a variation of this theme that can make the problem doubly so. By their nature, professors publish papers as part of the tenure process. Many will actually provide works for part or all of textbooks since they tend to be recognized experts in the field. You can probably see where this is headed. More than a few professors will actually assign textbooks they either wrote or contributed to as the authority for the class in question. While the professor is not part of the publishing and pricing process, there is little doubt that he or she is getting royalties off the sale and the publishing company knows full well if the book is being assigned as part of a class requirement.

Textbook prices are unjustifiably high. Next semester, consider going with an alternative such as renting, buying used or using a digital textbook. You'll save a lot of money and aggravation.

Textbook Prices - One Nasty Reason They Are So High

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