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From: pyotr filipivich <phamp@mindspring.com>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.e-book.technical
Subject: Re: WSJ: Textbook Sales Crater As Students Seek Cheap - Often Pirated - Alternatives
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 09:23:53 -0700
Organization: Fortesque D&R Labs
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Reid Bookman <notmy@real.name> on Fri, 29 Aug 2014 22:05:19 -0400
typed in alt.binaries.e-book.technical the following:
>On Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:29:02 -0400, Gone Postal
><gone_postal@it.doesn't.exist> wrote:
>>Perhaps pay-per-chapter books might be a way for publishers to break
>>out for e-books. Just as in the old way CD publishers used to sell
>>only complete CDs and adapted to the mp3 craze (eventually) by
>>breaking out CDs by song so you can buy what you want. I think that
>>book publishers could break out chapters of books online to buy
>>individually for those not taking the courses but who might be very
>>interested in the Introduction and maybe a chapter or two. I would
>>certainly consider buying such if it were reasonably priced.
>
>Interesting you should mention the introduction and first few chapters
>of a book. Several publishers are now putting the intro chapters
>online for free. I found this while trying to find a book I needed
>(but couldn't afford because it was overpriced, among other reasons).
>I Googled the name of the book and added filetype:pdf and found the
>first six chapters right on the publisher's site.
>
>I would never buy it anyway because it is a Wiley book, one of the
>companies involved in the attempted takedown of this newsgroup last
>year.
>
>The real solution is to lower the price.
>Not to bore anyone here with more economics and finance, but the
>outsized portion of operating income the publishers generated with
>textbooks is also an example of how they took advantage of the fact
>that there were no close substitutes to textbooks. Goods and services
>with no close substitutes tend to have a very inelastic price
>elasticity of demand - which means the price can soar without much
>decline in demand. That is no longer the case. They must lower prices
>or continue to deal with lower revenues from textbooks as more
>students use cheap/free substitutes.
Not to mention fewer students going to college.
Part of the scam is the "new revised" edition - which means new
pictures, more of them, and the resulting change in the page layouts,
so that page 121 in the first edition is not the same as page 121 in
the second, which is not the same as in the third, ... N+1.
Not to mention the "special editions" which often are printed for
the school, and are a photo copy (But a high quality photo copy)
extract of a textbook. I found in one case, I could get the original
textbook (all 1000 pages) for less (including shipping, and the CD)
than the school charged for their special extract of the condensed
version of the fundamentals of the text.
For what it is worth, I also spent a couple weeks trying to get
the work done with the copy on reserve in the library. Basically, an
hour with the scanner to copy the answer sheet, and then an hour doing
the homework. Checking with the instructor, I learned that yes, there
was going to be a lot more. "Fortunately", while I had ordered the
book from Walmart for store pickup earlier, it was still available at
the store "If I got there by 11 pm" (Evening Class, let out at 10.) I
got there, got the book - for somewhere between half and a third off
(on sale too). So "happy" - I now have that for reference as well.
--
pyotr filipivich
The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.
-- George Bancroft
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