Textbook prices frustrate me, but because I am an economics major I can recognize how it is a perfect industry.

Textbook consumers have an inelastic demand for the books, meaning that they have to have them regardless of price. Other goods that tend to have inelastic demands include food and cigarettes.

Publishers are profit-maximizing producers, meaning that they seek the highest profit possible. They operate simliarly to a monopoly, limiting quantity and pushing up prices.

Publishers are not stupid. They know that most students will buy the books, and they can therefore charge obscene prices. It's sickening, but I have to respect the model.

But that doesn't mean I'm not extremely pissed off having to pay around five hundred dollars a semester for shitty books. And then get a fifth of that maybe when I sell the books back.

They've got me, I admit it. Sure, I don't really want to buy the books, and sometimes I'll buy the book and barely use it. Perfect example: I have a calculus book that I barely used while I was in the class that the bookstore refused to take back. What am I going to do with a textbook now that I didn't use then? But I'm paranoid that the one semester I don't buy books, every test is going to be heavily based on the text and by the time I realize it, the books will be sold out.

So I'm fucked, basically, and the publishers know it.

Stupid free-market economics.

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