Submitted by RoamingErrapus (not verified) on January 29, 2009 - 3:54pm.
As a person who works for an independent publishing company, I can tell you that we always keep the student's cost in mind when pricing our books (which happen to be some of the lowest around in the Humanities area.)
As to what is left out, is that most publishers sell their books to bookstores and National distributors at a huge discount (btw 30-50%) with Amazon and Barnes & Nobel demanding more. So our list price is not the profit we make on the book, hardly from that.
That is why you can get textbooks cheaper from Amazon and other online outlets. Plus, bookstores, especially college bookstores, offer buy backs at 30% of what the students paid then resell "used" books usually only 20% below a new book price. And none of this money goes to the publisher.
So before you are quick to think that ALL publishers are money-grubbing, all-powerful and scheming companies, remember there are independent presses genuinely out there trying to produce high-quality, innovative and affordable textbooks for students.
Also feed on this: There are only 4 major publishing/media outlets in the world that control over 85% of all (ALL) media (publishing including). Those are the companies to watch out for.
As a person who works for an
As a person who works for an independent publishing company, I can tell you that we always keep the student's cost in mind when pricing our books (which happen to be some of the lowest around in the Humanities area.)
As to what is left out, is that most publishers sell their books to bookstores and National distributors at a huge discount (btw 30-50%) with Amazon and Barnes & Nobel demanding more. So our list price is not the profit we make on the book, hardly from that.
That is why you can get textbooks cheaper from Amazon and other online outlets. Plus, bookstores, especially college bookstores, offer buy backs at 30% of what the students paid then resell "used" books usually only 20% below a new book price. And none of this money goes to the publisher.
So before you are quick to think that ALL publishers are money-grubbing, all-powerful and scheming companies, remember there are independent presses genuinely out there trying to produce high-quality, innovative and affordable textbooks for students.
Also feed on this: There are only 4 major publishing/media outlets in the world that control over 85% of all (ALL) media (publishing including). Those are the companies to watch out for.