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Artap99
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
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2006-03-27, 21:13

I've talked to a lot of professors who wrote the textbooks for my college. They need to sell a certain amount to start seeing money for them, as the publisher "charges" them to make the book. When I say charge, I mean that the writer of the book sees no profit until the publisher does.
College texts aren't exactly books that fly off of the shelves, so publishing a professor's work is a bit of a risk. Most of the classes at my college have thirty students. So even if the professor is teaching the same class twice every semester (which is highly unlikely), the most you're going to have a year is 120 books bought. But realistically, it would be more around 100 or so when you account for the people who bought a used copy, didn't buy a copy, shared a copy, etc.
In order for my old art teacher to make money off of his book, he had to sell 4,000 copies (I think that's what he said. It may have been less/more). It doesn't really seem like that much in a global sense, but it does in a relative sense. That's 40 years of teaching to make a profit.
A lot of professors require students to buy their books because it's their book. They wrote it specifically for the course. It compliments their teaching style and makes things more fluid.
This isn't a blanket statement. Not everything is like this, but for the most part it's true. I realize that some classes have a couple hundred students and the books are required and the teachers are making money, but that isn't a typical situation.

In conclusion, the books don't make much money, so the publishers charge more for the niche audience (since they generally can't refuse to buy it). The professors don't usually make much money, they use it to assist in teaching. And it sucks for the students.
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