Word: textbooks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Professor of Economics N. Gregory Mankiw, the author of the Ec 10 textbook, says the reason textbooks are more expensive than trade books such as hardcover novels is simple: higher costs of production...
...front costs to a publisher of textbooks are huge compared to a publisher of novels," says Mankiw, who received a $1.4 million advance for the textbook that has won critical acclaim. He cites features such as colorful graphics, reprints of copyrighted material like cartoons, supplementary material, like instructor's manuals, and length as factors that account for the higher price...
...Anyone is free to enter the market and avoid these costs," he says. "One could probably publish more cheaply a black-and-white textbook without any" of the added features, but "few instructors would choose such a book, I suspect, because it is not really in the students' interest to sacrifice educational value to save a few dollars...
While the cost-per-class figure is part of tuition and therefore covered under financial aid, textbook prices are lopped in with pocket expenses...
...easiest and simplest remedy for high textbook costs is for students to buy used books, but that requires action by professors and the Coop...