How Much does your family spend on College Textbooks

per semester. Just wanted to know if what we're paying is the average.

and that was getting off cheaply

Each book averages just under $100. And that's just the beginning.

and needs two more books on order! this is insane.

she bought as many used books as possible too!

College textbooks are worked on by a team of anywhere from 12-75+ people; trade books, about 4-12. Author, development editor, acquisitions editor, project editor, editorial assistant, production supervisor, compositor manager, page layout techs, proofreader, copy editor, art editor, permissions manager, manufacturing buyer, marketing staffers, archivists, the printer CSR, the guys that run the press (3-12 guys), warehouse staff, and I'm sure I've left out people. And as an example of the costs to the publisher: for a history textbook, photo permissions alone can cost around $40,000.

What was the most expensive non-textbook book you've ever bought?

My son was a mathematics/physics major (now a grad student), and his math books were batshit crazy expensive, because they are so arcane and limited in sales. He began to save money by buying those books he didn't think he would want to keep long-term in copies from Chinese companies (this is somehow legitimate, though I don't know how)--the paper was crap, but he saved hundreds of dollars each quarter.

Fortunately, in my family, my mother (aka "Grandma") gave each grandchild money each semester for books during the time they were in college. A lifesaver for parents already in debt from tuition and housing payments.

Often, costs are spread out over a small print run, especially for the higher-level texts.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, announced that the average New York college freshman and sophomore spends more than $900 a year on texts -- 41 percent more than in 1998 -- and proposed a plan to make $1,000 of textbook costs tax deductible.

... everyone else has them! And the books have to be chock full of (mostly marginally relevant) professional , full-color photographs, or flashy computer-rendered graphics ... because their competitors have them! And they have to provide Web site support, and downloadable supplements, even if many students don't bother with them ... because their competitors have them! And they have to include a CD full of "instructive" :eyes: animations and propietary, short-lived software ... because their competitors have them!

It's eye candy and feel-good, hand-holding "support" that makes so much of that costly infrastructure "necessary". A good, solid book, featuring black & white text, line drawings, and maybe one or two colors of ink for emphasis, would be perfectly adequate for many (not all, *obviously*) subjects. Specialized texts for low-enrollment specialty courses follow this format -- they are basically professional books, serving a second purpose as grad school textbooks.

We don't need Madison Ave or Hollywood taking over academe. Look at the cost of Dover books -- and some of them were first published in the 90's.

Hardly any photos, not much in the way of support materials--best world lit. book I've ever seen. Great pieces, good intros, good footnotes, and decent questions at the end of each piece.

I couldn't talk the rest of the dept. into buying that one instead because it wasn't pretty enough and didn't come with overheads already made up. *sigh*

but I guarantee you that if it was made by a textbook publisher, it had all the support staff I mentioned work on it. For one thing, someone had to get all those text perms and the publisher had to pay the perms fees; for text those can range from $100 (for a letter excerpt, say, or a short speech) to over $2,500 for a short story.

The little bit I did in college (helped do the lit mag) convinced me of that.

Overall, though, it was a cheaper book and well worth the money. I wish we'd gone with it. I kept my sample copy and have used it many times. ;)

can spend upwards of $1000.

to find out my nursing school texts were much more expensive than the tuition at my little 2 year "where else can you go?" school was. I managed to read texts and CLEP as many courses as I could, but the cost of those med books just about killed me. Nurses keep their books and they're usually changed every semester, to the pickings for old books were slim.

One added advantage of that CLEP program, I did well enough to be offered a job as a paid tutor at the school between classes. It was one of four jobs I did and it helped a lot.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=157&topic_id=4964&mesg_id=4964

My students are paying over $200 for ONE chemistry textbook. It's the cost of bundled "shovelware" CD's and school/publisher deals that are the big culprits.

To think that I paid $75-85 a semester for books in the early 80's ... sure, there's been inflation, but that wasn't a HUGE sacrifice back then. It just seemed normal. There's nothing remotely "normal" about today's prices, which, like tuition, are going up about twice as fast as monetary inflation.

s/he can ask the publisher rep to have them unbundled. And we are compelled to comply with those requests.

and the result is overcaution. "Better include them, just to be safe ... oh, and that makes inventory easier, so it's easier on the bookstore too, and we have to deal with them ..." Increasingly, I am finding bundles are the ONLY option in the bookstores, even though a majority of the instructors didn't expressly ask for them.

When Hubby and I were in college, he paid more per book for his pre-med chemistry major, but I ended up paying more per class for my English major. It got seriously ridiculous in med school. Eight hundred dollar textbooks were the norm.

level - it is horrible

I had to quit cocaine because my books were so expensive. What's with all the publishers reprinting perfectly good books.

For my fourth I bought used books online and spent $180. That is just for three classes; one of my profs didn't assign a text, and one is a philosophy class for which I can find the books in the library.