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From: gtaylor@heurikon.UUCP (Ik betwijfel 't....)
Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
Subject: the high cost of text books!
Message-ID: <278@heurikon.UUCP>
Date: 1 Dec 88 14:06:39 GMT
References: <2219@cbnews.ATT.COM> <684@stech.UUCP> <17553@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: gtaylor@heurikon.UUCP (Ik betwijfel 't....)
Organization: The Attractor Agency
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One of the things about the business of publishing scholarly (or any
kind) of books that hasn't been mentioned here and will probably only
make sense to old farts *over* the 30 years during which they're making
fantastic salaries is the relatively recent change in the rules for
inventory. My experience has been that it's been monumentally to blame
for driving the cost of some texts through the roof.

Back in the old days when you didn't get chased down the street by
angry mobs for admitting some interest in Liberalism, the rules on
the books for accounting and tax purposes stated that you could print
thousands of copies of your perhaps less than mainstream text (thus
keeping your printing costs/copy somewhat in line) and then keep them
in your inventory over a large number of years, getting a decent tax
break on your business expenses for your inventories. If you knew that
your text on Elementary Fregmolization was maybe going to move 500
copies per year, you simply ran off 2000 of them and kept a lid on
your prices (since printing costs are also fluid as well).

The current rules of this kinder and gentler America are now such that
there are restrictions on doing that which effectively make it
impossible to do. The net result has been that the small to moderate
runs of scholarly texts all over the map either go out of print
completely (which makes theft of said texts from libraries a crime I'd
be willing to turn over to the Shi'a Islamic courts any day), or that
they're printed in much smaller editions and thus subject to dramatic
rises in cost per printed copy at the first run and then as the book
is reprinted. Since the standard number of review copies necessary to
find the people who'd actually *use* the text remains essentially the
same in spite of these increased costs, the availability of review
copies is also totally messed up (making it harder to find the books
if you're looking for something like them). Nasty business.

Of course, there was something of an outcry among a number of us back
when the rules went into effect, claiming that this would have a major
impact on the price and availability of everything except for Tom
Clancy and Jacqueline (and, I suppose, Gardner's History of Art)
Collins. The great sadness of all this for me is that I guess I was
righter than I thought.

One final note and essay questions: Have any of you budding analysts
looked into the average profit margins of the currently constituted
publishing market? While the desktop route has some real promise (and
some real hazard, judging from the atrocious design and layout I've
seen in a couple of "new" desktop computer and engineering texts), the
business still has the usual constraints, and those margins are a lot
tighter than I'll bet a number of you budding engineers would be willing
to live with in *your* business life.

Greg (trying to figure out whether I should use that $40 University of
Chicago text on Foucault and Post-Structuralism for the seminar text
or fall back on using Jean Auell's "The Clan of the Cave Bear" like I
did last semester ....;-) Taylor
-- 
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place at which the fences start/over the line/over the wall/an arbitrary
border/after all/you cannot move/with equal ease/may i see/your passport
please/greg taylor/Heurikon/3201 Latham Dr./Madison, WI 53716/608-271-8700