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Re: REFLECTION on the sorry state of textbook publishing



I suspect most faculty do not know what students will pay for books when
they select a text. Being frugal myself I call the bookstore and ask.
Among other things, they tell me that students realy do not care what a book
costs since for most of them it is paid by financial aid. In fact the whole
thing is a bit of a scam. Financial aid pays for the book, but the student
resells the book and pockets the cash. The more the book costs the more
cash the student gets. It is the taxpayers (as usual) that are being cleaned.

Prices are not fixed and in the US it is illegal to fix prices. Many book
stores do discount and the amount varies. But unless there is competition
there is no incentive to discount, and many retailers of texts have no
effective competition.

On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 23:00:18 -0800 Leigh Palmer said:

Our students are being taken to the cleaners by the publishers and many
faculty don't seem to care. It is a disgrace.

Thank you for your indulgence of my rant. I feel better now.

Leigh