Re: textbook prices

[Daniel Schroeder <DSCHROEDER@CC.WEBER.EDU>]

> Robert Beichner suggested checking how much our bookstore marks up textbook
> prices.  I had already done so.  The mark-up runs 20 to 25% (not 40%).

Be sure to distinguish markup from margin.  If you ask my bookstore
what their markup is, they'll reply that their margin is 25%.  Margin
is the amount they add divided by the retail price, while markup is
the amount they add divided by the wholesale price.  A 25% margin
means a 33% markup.  My understanding is that this (33% markup) is
by far the most common and close to the national average.  If your
bookstore has a lower markup than this, you're very fortunate.

> Dan Schroeder:  When you make up your problem sets, do you worry about
> notational consistency with the particular text you're using in a given
> term?

No, that's pretty much a non-issue.  I try to write problems with words,
not symbols, as much as possible; and many notations are standard
across texts; and the notation I use in class sometimes differs from
the text anyway (as in v_x instead of simply v for velocity along
the x axis).

> The pricing still puzzles me.  Dan Schroeder's concern about the prices of
> upper-level books is somewhat more easily addressed, actually:
> Springer-Verlag publishes some good (flex-cover) upper-level texts at under
> $50 (!)  How do they do it?

As explained on my web page, $50 in today's money is about equal to the
average price of such a text between 1960 and 1985 (during which time
prices didn't change much, in constant dollars).  Soft cover doesn't
save them any money in production costs, but it does mean that readers
are willing to pay less and that the book is less likely to be resold.

My theory is that the American textbook publishers have gotten fat and
inefficient at doing upper-level texts.  They have bloated staffs for
handling the huge full-color introductory texts, and the owners are
greedy for ever-larger profit margins.  As long as students keep paying
$90 per textbook, why *should* they charge less?

As an author, I've tried to fight this trend.  At the risk of using
this list for self-serving commercial promotion, let me describe what
I did with my own thermal physics book, just published by Addison-Wesley.
First, I sent the manuscript to two publishers (A-W and Wiley), and made
it clear that I wanted a price agreement in the contract and that I would
go with the publisher that promised to keep the price lower.  Second,
I did all the typesetting myself (with TeX) and produced camera-ready
postscript files from which they printed the book.  (This saved them
a lot of money, and wasn't any more work for me than proofreading and
correcting someone else's typing.)  Finally, I agreed to take a lower
royalty rate, only 5% instead of the more usual 10-15%, on the first
2800 copies sold in North America.  This was essential because the
publisher's rules require that they make back most or all of their
costs in the first year, which is almost a ridiculous requirement
for an upper-level text.  If the book does well, my royalties will
go up later.  In return, Addison-Wesley promised to keep the net
(wholesale) price to $31, plus increases over time not to exceed
those of the U.S. Consumer Price Index.  Your bookstore can now
buy the book for $31 per copy, or you can buy it yourself for
$31 plus the usual 33% markup, $41.33.  Hardcover, 422 pages.

Meanwhile, Ralph Baierlein has just published a thermal physics
book with Cambridge University Press.  The university presses seem
to work by different rules; they certainly aren't governed by the
rules of full-color, 1000-page introductory books.  Baierlein's book
is available in hardcover for 80 or 90 dollars, and in paperback
for about $40.  I guess libraries buy the hardcover, and this
partially subsidizes the sales of paperback copies to individuals.
(The production cost of the paperback is *not* significantly less.)

> My age is showing, I'm afraid, as I can still pick up my massive
> copy of Schweber's Intro. to Relativistic Quantum Field Theory and see the
> price I paid for it:  $12.50.

That's probably higher, in constant dollars, than the current price
of my 842-page field theory text:  $55 or perhaps a bit more if they've
raised it recently.  The low price of this book is not because we put
a price agreement in the contract; it's because there are competing
books from university presses at comparable prices.  When there is
true competition, prices naturally come down.

Dan Schroeder
dschroeder@cc.weber.edu
http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/