Re: Textbook prices

[Daniel Schroeder <DSCHROEDER@CC.WEBER.EDU>]

> Is anyone else as appalled as I am at recent trends in physics textbook
> prices?  I happened to notice that our college bookstore has Serway &
> Faughn, College Physics, selling for $106.70.  Now this is one of the
> better texts for a non-calculus course, but that's not saying much, and
> it's not worth half that price.  (As far as I'm concerned, none of the
> introductory texts are worth half that price.)  Our bookstore manager
> believes that these ridiculous prices are at least partly the result of
> recent consolidations of publishers.
>
> I'm increasingly finding myself comparing prices when I select a text for
> any of my courses.  What are you folks doing?
>
> Harvey Picker

Last year I did a bit of research (with much help from members of
this list) and compiled some data on physics textbook prices as
a function of time since 1960.  The results, along with much
discussion, are at http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/bookprices.html.
(My impression is that the trend of rising prices has continued,
and possibly even accelerated, in the year and a half since I
wrote that document.)

My concern, then and now, has been mostly with prices of upper-division
books, which have no color and are quite inexpensive to print.  For
lower-division books there is the additional complication of the
recent trend toward color printing and the associated increased cost
of printing and artwork.  These costs, of course, are diluted by
the huge number of copies sold compared to upper-division texts.
Although I am unhappy with most lower-division texts in many ways,
I feel that most of the weaknesses (poor writing, too many details,
meaningless problems) are more the fault of instructors who adopt
the books than of publishers or even authors.  In many ways the
quality of these books is actually quite high; the amount of work
that goes into them is certainly enormous.

One solution to the problem of high-priced introductory books is for
students to buy used books and/or sell them back when the course is
over.  Bookstores generally love this, but publishers hate it and
that's why new editions now come out every three or four years.
To fight back, I've decided from now on to type up all my homework
assignments, so students won't need the current edition just to be
sure of which problems are being assigned.  This should free the
students to use an older edition (or even a different text) or
to share books.  If everyone did this, students nationwide would
be free to price-shop for books, rather than being the captive
market they currently are.

Dan Schroeder
Physics Department
Weber State University