Thanks for the responses. Actually, I've been concerned about physics (and
other) textbook prices for quite some time now. I guess it was the
breaking of the $100 barrier that led me to post to this list.
Peter Mccardell suggested comparing the Trinity College bookstore's price
with Amazon.com. That I did: For the 5th (and current) edition of Serway
and Faughn, College Physics, Amazon charges $118, $11.30 _more_ than our
bookstore. (This is consistent with my other surveys of Amazon prices for
technical books. I guess it's convenience, not price, that they're
selling.) Amazon also has available the 4th edition of Serway and Faughn
(copyright just one year earlier than the 5th edition) for a paltry $103.
Robert Beichner suggested checking how much our bookstore marks up textbook
prices. I had already done so. The mark-up runs 20 to 25% (not 40%).
John Gastineau notes that some publishers put out new editions because
problem sets "wear out". My experience has been that the problems change
very little from one edition to the next, and most are minor variations on
ones that have been kicking around since the original Sears and Zemansky
and Halliday and Resnick texts. At the risk of sounding cynical, I think
that publishers churn out new editions for the same reason that Microsoft
churns out new versions of Windows: To make more money.
I haven't been able to check out Steven Richardson's suggestion to try
VarsityBooks.com, since that site does not seem to want to perform a search
for me.
Dan Schroeder: When you make up your problem sets, do you worry about
notational consistency with the particular text you're using in a given
term? You're right, publishers give us what they think we want (though not
pricewise). But how do they know what we want? I, for one, don't want
multi-color texts full of largely irrelevant gimmick photos that tend to
interrupt the flow of the exposition. And I've said this repeatedly to
publishers and their representatives. But they can easily ignore
individual comments, I'm afraid.
Yes, writing an introductory text is a prodigious undertaking, especially
with the quasi-encyclopedias that now serve as the standards. But that's
no excuse for characteristically careless, uninspired prose and garbled
explanations. There's an awful lot of just plain gibberish in many, if not
most, of the popular texts. (Examples furnished upon request.)
I have, from time to time, explored alternatives. On occasion, I will just
use one of the Schaum's Outlines (but _NOT_ for introductory physics) and
add my own notes. I eagerly scan the Dover catalog for books I can use.
Becker and Sauter's E&M book, for example, is at least as clear as the
current standards. It just lacks an adequate collection of problems. And
Max Born's _Einstein's Theory of Relativity_ is a lovely survey of
classical (i.e. non-quantum) physics, which I did once (in 1971) use for a
noncalculus physics course. There are some minor hitches: F = ma reads K
= mb in Born's book, as one might have expected in the German original.
The pricing still puzzles me. Dan Schroeder's concern about the prices of
upper-level books is somewhat more easily addressed, actually:
Springer-Verlag publishes some good (flex-cover) upper-level texts at under
$50 (!) How do they do it?
It pains me to order texts that I really don't enjoy reading myself. And I
have spent many long hours agonizing over the choice of texts for my
courses. When the prices of these volumes soars into 3 figures, I get
upset. My age is showing, I'm afraid, as I can still pick up my massive
copy of Schweber's Intro. to Relativistic Quantum Field Theory and see the
price I paid for it: $12.50.
Harvey Picker
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Harvey Picker e-mail:
harvey.picker@mail.trincoll.edu
Physics Department phone: (860)297-2299
Trinity College fax: (860)987-6239
Hartford, CT 06106
USA
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