The College Textbook Pricing Racket | Intellectual Takeout:
"The business of selling college textbooks is a racket.
As Ernie Smith of Atlas Obscura notes, it has a long history.
Every academic year a new edition of practically every college textbook is released by the publisher.
The prices of college textbooks are horrendously high, sometimes in
excess of $200.
Since textbooks are required reading in almost every college course, students must buy or rent the newest, and thus the most expensive, edition.
...Sometimes publishers contact professors asking them to write textbooks.
The
profit motive for publishers is immense.
So is it for the professor who writes a widely used textbook.
Royalties from a single book have been known to pay entire mortgages.
But why do college textbook publishers charge so much?
George Washington University political science professor Henry Farrell offers an explanation:
“College textbook publishers charge vast and extortionate amounts for their textbooks for one simple reason.
They do it because they can.
Students usually have to take a few required big courses for their major, and they have to buy the required textbooks for these courses.
This means that the
market is price insensitive (which is economic jargon for saying that demand doesn’t go down as much as it should when prices go up)..."
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