From: jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele)
Subject: Re: High Prices of Math Books. I am pissed.
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 03:07:01 GMT

mkant+@cs.cmu.edu (Mark Kantrowitz) writes:

>In article <92Dec24.175829est.47880@neat.cs.toronto.edu> gh@cs.toronto.edu (Graeme Hirst) writes:
>>This misses the point of the original posting, which was this:  Some
>>publishers (e.g., McGraw-Hill, Prentice-Hall, Addison-Wesley, and other
>>names with hyphens) will make the *same* book in different bindings at
>>different prices in different parts of the world.   In particular, they
>>will sell a cheap paperback edition only outside North America, while
>>insisting that North American customers buy the hardcover edition at a
>>much higher price.

In certain parts of the world, the publishers publish cheap paperbacks
to defend against pirates.  By pricing their books at a lower price,
they remove the temptation to photocopy or otherwise reproduce the more
expensive books.  Many software manufacturers quietly practice amnesty
programs: if you say "I have a pirated copy of SuperDuperWriter, but I
will pay the upgrade fee if you'll send me a legal copy" will promptly
do so.  They're not necessarily happy about it, but any revenue is
better than no revenue.  Book publishers can't do this exactly, but 
publishing cheap books raises a "barrier to entry" in countries that
don't enforce copyright as quickly as the publishers would like.

>That's usually a marketing decision, nothing more. For some reason
>hardcover sells better in the US. It is also more likely to get reviewed,
>which means they sell more copies.

The difference in manufacturing costs between hardcover and paperback
is small.   What you're possibly paying for is (as you mention) short 
print runs, camera work (including equations and proofreading), and two 
other things you didn't mention: reviews and sample copies.

By "reviews" I don't writeups in magazines, but a professional
page-by-page review of the book, checking to see that the equations are
right, that the sums add properly, and that everything else is as 
accurate as possible.  This can be a subtantial chunk of money.  But 
this is extremely important for books, especially those that are
expected to be "reference" works.  It's probably more important for
books than even refereed journals.

Textbooks that the publisher hopes to see widely adopted need to be sent
to people who make the decision on what texts to use.  All of the costs
must be paid for ahead of time: instructors won't use an inaccurate
text; won't use one that doesn't have the proper graphs and equations;
etc.  If a book isn't adopted fairly widely, the publisher is out those
costs.  Which means that the next book has to pay for them.  

There are numerous problems with electronic distribution, but the
proliferation of the Internet makes it more and more likely that it will
be easy to retrieve books from their "home" storage place.

--
jamesd@techbook.COM                   "2516 newsgroups & nothing on ..."  
PDaXs gives free access to news & mail. (503) 220-0636 - 1200/2400, N81  
Full internet (ftp, telnet, irc) access available. Voice: (503) 223-4245
Newsgroups: sci.math