The economics of text books
Andrew Gelman was shocked to learn the price of text books. This lead to an interesting discussion on the economics of text books.
The price of a text book
Personally I have noticed that the price seems to be inversely proportional to how broad the topic of the book is. The more specialised the topic, the higher the price. 1312 pages of general biology in a hardback for $129.30 (about $0.10 per page) versus 290 pages of coalescence theory for $73.38 (about $0.25 per page). 576 pages (and a CD-ROM) of linear algebra for $97.93 ($0.17 per page) versus 272 pages of category theory for $124 (about $0.46 per page).
These are just some random examples, of course, but it is the general impression I have. I would love to see some hard numbers, though.
Anyway, it makes sense that books that likely sells in fewer copies are more expensive, to cover the cost of producing the book. At least if there is an up front cost of producing the book that must be recovered.
I mailed around to those of my colleauges I know have written text books. They all tell me that they got a small percentage of the sales (and all agreed that it was very little compared to the time it takes to write a book). So it is not that there is an up front salary for the author that drives up the price of books.
That leaves all the editing and typesetting to recover, and that might be quite a lot. Although I know from experience that the proof readers are payed very little. Last time I got a few hundred dollars and a few free copies of the book. I guess it can also be cheaper to mass produce a very large number of copies compared to a few, but I refuse to believe that the difference is more than a factor of two.
So I don’t think the price is particularly driven by the expenses in producing a book.
The economics of text books
One point, mentioned in several of the comments at Gelman’s blog is that the economics of text books is very inelastic. The professor chooses a text book — and might have no idea about the price of the book — and the students are pretty much stuck with that book and cannot shop for cheaper alternatives.
There is a marked in the quality of the text book — I assume that the professor will always go for what he considers the best book — but not in the price.
I know that I get free “teachers copies” of the text books I use, and I very rarely think about the price unless it is brought to my attention which really only happenes if it is extremely expensive compared to the average text book.
In such a marked, there is little reason to lower the price.
It also explains why more specialised topics will have more expensive books. There are fewer of the books, so less competition between the publishers. Since price is not that important for the choice of text book, the publishers can raise it and still sell it.
Things to think about when you write a text book
Everyone I’ve asked tells me that what the author gets paid for writing a text book is not worth the time it takes to write it.
Not that it is not worth the time to write a text book, don’t get me wrong, but the income from it is no motivation at all.
I have thought about writing a text book from time to time, when I am not satisfied with the choices I have for a class I teach. This is always what has motivated me (but apparently not enough to actually do it).
I could imagine that it is the same for most text book writes. At least the many that only write a few in a long academic career, not the few who cranks out text books all the time.
Now I’m thinking that if I ever end up writing a text book, why not just make it an e-book that I can give away for free? It is not as if the money I could earn from selling it is worth much.
Sure, there is a certain charm in holding a paper book, but print-on-demand can take care of that, I guess (does anyone know the price of that?)
There is, of course, also the proof reading and editing, but I am confident that if you put a free e-book out there, you will get plenty of feedback if people starts using it. And with my experience with first edition text books and their errata list, that is really the important feedback.
It is worth thinking about, at least.
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February 12th, 2009 at 10:48 am
For print-on-demand prices, see for instance Lulu.
February 12th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Competition probably plays a part as well. There are dozens of “General Biology”-textbooks, and the people who pick them out do care about the price. On the other hand, there can’t be that many alternatives to “Category Theory”.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
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February 12th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I have to admit I’ve always questioned the reason for textbooks at all. My first couple of undergrad years I dutifully bought all the textbooks that the professors assigned, but I realized later on (with the exception of some classes like math, where problem sets were assigned from the textbooks) that textbooks are not in general very useful. Rarely do courses in say, biochemistry or microbiology, follow the textbook. Nor do I find any the aging textbooks that I still have to be useful references given more convenient and current sources of info available in the digital era.
I haven’t taught a course since my days as a TA, but if I ever do, I’ll certainly make my lecture notes available to the students as the better professors from my education generally did; undergrads have better things to spend their money on than text books.
February 12th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I personally like text books for many courses — but of course my classes are usually somewhat math-y, so that doesn’t really conflict with what you say, Jonathan.
On the other hand, for programming classes I prefer my own notes or links to tutorials here and there.
When there is a textbook, however, I think it is very important that the teaching is not just lecturing from the book, but actually contributes something that goes beyond it. The material in the book, after all, can just be read.
That is a completely different topic, though, so I won’t rant more about that for now :)
February 14th, 2009 at 5:41 am
I read of a prof( I can’t find the link), who chose a few suitable textbooks, and then put out a tender to the publishing companies, the cheapest one was chosen for the class.
February 14th, 2009 at 5:44 am
Here it is, http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2008/12/29/minnesota-textbook-costs/
February 16th, 2009 at 9:47 am
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