Re: textbook prices

[Dennis.E.Krause@williams.edu (Dennis Krause)]

> It is the cost of setup, especially for the very large presses used
> for book publishing. I used to work in a small paper with a small
> press and it took hours just to get ready to print. Scale up to a
> very large operation and the labor costs should increase accordingly.
> In that case, it is much more effective to amortize the cost over
> 100,000 copies than only 1000.

        I'm sure this is important for the new textbooks with lots of
colors and glossy photos, but I wonder how true this is for technical
monographs where the authors may typeset the books themselves using LaTeX
styles provided by the publishers.  Surely technology should bring down the
costs somewhat.  Furthermore, Dover books are quite inexpensive and very
well constructed for paperbacks, and I have a beautifully bound book on
gravitation by Eddington that I bought new a few years ago from Chelsea
Press that was incredibly cheap for the quality of the binding (<$20).  Oh,
well, I guess computers are so much cheaper that I can afford to pay more
for books....


                                        Dennis


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