Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: textbook prices



The setup costs are mainly involved in setting up the presses, a very
involved and labor-intensive process. Typesetting and layout used to
be a big deal but isn't so much anymore. Dover books are usually
stuff that has been out of print for a while and many of them, if not
all, are in the public domain and require no royalty payments.

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


**************************************************************************
* Dennis E. Krause

Paul J. Camp "The Beauty of the Universe
Assistant Professor of Physics consists not only of unity
Coastal Carolina University in variety but also of
Conway, SC 29528 variety in unity.
pjcamp@coastal.edu --Umberto Eco
pjcamp@postoffice.worldnet.att.net The Name of the Rose
(803)349-2227
fax: (803)349-2926