(no subject)

[geekchick]

I'm trying to register for a technical writing class at NVCC, but their online registration application tells me I can't enroll because I haven't taken College Composition I. Yes I have. Seventeen years ago. *ahem* I'm pretty sure that extremely expensive piece of paper sitting in the basement implies that I've successfully passed freshman composition (although granted, not at NVCC). Note to self: email professor tomorrow and ask for permission to do an end run around the registration software.

I used to work in a college bookstore and so I know the logic behind some of the store pricing, but $100 for a paperback is still just stupid.

Comments

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

About the best price you'll find on that book is $65. :) B&N's member price is good.

[geekchick]

Yeah, I'm just whining because I remember how annoyed we all were to have to pay $50 for the then-current edition of Campbell's Biology. ;) (See note about how I took freshman comp seventeen years ago. *grin*)

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh that's my Biology book. Try $130, that many years later. :)

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the lab manual that goes with it? $75.

I'm struggling in that course. So are a lot of others. I can't believe I pay to be subjected to that form of torture. I think the Doctor that teaches it enjoys torturing us. Of course, I've heard that he's into that sort of thing, so.. :)

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Technical Writing. $100 textbook. Trade ya!! ;-)

[college-buddha.livejournal.com]

Yep, $130. I sold it back for maybe $30. The sad thing is, if they hadn't upgraded to a new edition, I could have gotten an older edition from my high school AP Bio teacher for $25.

[free-of-whip.livejournal.com]

I thought that the sole purposes of prerequisite requirements was so that you could practice creative writing in the e-mail you sent to the professor asking to be excused from them. Then again, I was the one who took Calculus II without ever having taken Calculus I. lol

[points.livejournal.com]

What -is- the logic behind the pricing?

[geekchick]

Heh. =)

I (wisely, in my opinion) decided that biology was not for me since the only open lab at the time was 8 AM. I also didn't take Arabic because it was at 8 AM. There was a theme. ;) I switched to geology instead, which still had an expensive textbook but no lab. Or rather, my lab ended up being a road trip to Tennessee to go crawl around in caves with the guy who I ended up dating starting pretty much with said trip. *grin*

[geekchick]

A big part of the reason I worked in the bookstore all through college was I got to find out what textbooks I was going to need in advance and I got a decent discount. New editions were the bane of my existence both when I had to buy them and later when I had to spend my days on the phone with publishers finding out if there was going to be one coming out for the next semester.

[geekchick]

Oh HELL no! I failed calculus once already, I see no need to repeat the experience thankyouverymuch. =)

[geekchick]

Heh. =) Given that the syllabus for this class specifically calls out that they expect you to turn in college-level work, I think in this case they're trying to screen for people who really don't need to be diving into technical writing quite yet.

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

Hee. :) I can't take any other Science labs without taking Biology. I didn't do so hot with it in high school, either, so it's no surprise that it's hell now.

What makes it difficult, though, is a few other factors: No homework, no reading. All testing is derived from notes in class. Chapters covered in 1 day with no review. Unit tests cover 5 chapters.

I think I'd -prefer- homework and assigned reading to this. I completely bombed the section on cellular respiration.

[geekchick]

Well, it depends. =) A lot of publishers sell to bookstores at a discount; for instance, those Penguin paperbacks with the pre-printed prices on them came with a roughly 40% discount for bookstores, at least when I was dealing with them. You were invoiced for the discounted price, the books were already priced when they came from the publisher, you tossed them out on the shelves and there was your profit. 40% is a pretty deep discount, usually it would run in the 20%-30% range. Other publishers, particularly those who specialize in textbooks it seemed (Addison Wesley and Wiley come to mind, although they may have changed this in the 10 years since I dealt with this) don't provide a discount. You pay their net price and then figure your standard markup on top of what you've paid. My employer's standard markup at the time was around 20%. When you saw the $80 paperback textbook from Addison Wesley, the bookstore wasn't actually ripping you off nearly as badly as you might think; the publisher was the one charging the bookstore $65 for it in the first place. This is not to say, mind you, that there's no gouging ever going on in the bookstores (there were some practices I saw that I was not thrilled with, but I'm not going to go into them here), but in general the bookstore isn't as much to blame for the prices as you might think. (Assuming, of course, we're not talking about someplace whose standard markup is unreasonable.)

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

what if you had the 9th rather than 10th edition? ($3.90)

[free-of-whip.livejournal.com]

From the other side of it (as an author), I can tell you that very little of the price of an academic book relates to the cost of producing the book. My book is now selling for $199.00. The cost of manufacturing it (even though it is a hardback) is about $10 or $15. I get about $20. Most of the rest consists of advertising costs. Because you have to spend so much to get a book noticed, and academic books typically don't sell that many copies even once they are noticed, the cost of advertising per book sold is astronomical.

[points.livejournal.com]

Very good to know. Thank you!

[points.livejournal.com]

Huh. Makes sense. Thank you!

[geekchick]

I knew there was a lot of money for advertising built in, but I hadn't realized quite how much. Very interesting, thank you. It also puts some of those $150 100-page engineering texts I've seen into perspective. =)