mostlyharmless

The Inexpensive Textbook

The top selling book on Amazon right now is about 40 times cheaper than an introductory textbook on finance. It doesn't take a genius to know that textbooks, at least in the US, are very expensive. There are several cited reasons for this.

Textbooks have an active used market with buy-back schemes and none of the transactions that happen with used textbooks benefits the publisher or the author, hence it makes sense to charge higher upfront. Firstly, that is untrue. Cars have a large used market which doesn't seem to inflate car prices. In fact, car manufacturers and dealers promote the fact that a car model has a good resale price and make it part of the buying decision. Research has shown that this is true for textbooks too - the increase in sales of a textbook when it is known that it has a good resale value exceeds the loss in value of used textbooks. Secondly, if the textbook prices weren't so high, perhaps students wouldn't be so eager to sell them. To justify an action because of the undesired side-effects of the action is illogical.

Textbooks cost more to produce than novels because of the graphics, pictures and colors used. This increases the cost and hence the price. This is fair - textbooks do indeed cost more to produce than novels. But why do digital textbooks cost just as much as paper textbooks? The design cost is fixed - there is no marginal overhead of color ink, hardcopies and graph drawings with every copy sold.

Textbooks don't sell as many copies as bestsellers and need to be priced higher to achieve the same revenue. This might seem to have merit, but can be easily debunked. There are about 100,000 MBA students who graduate in the US every year and everyone needs an introduction to finance textbook. Given the number of editions of some of these textbooks, they stay relevant for at least about 20 years. That's 2 million textbooks just from MBA students in the US. I won't do the math for all the MBAs in the rest of the world along with all the non-MBA students who could use this book. That is potentially millions of copies, if the price is right. One could argue that the revenues are distributed over time, which brings me to my second point. Why should textbooks make as much revenue as bestselling novels?

Textbook publishing is an oligopoly with a few players who can control the price. Students have no option but to listen to the recommedation on professors, who in turn, have no incentive to care about cost. This is probably the most convincing argument. But because they can doesn't mean they should.

What's the solution?

There is obviously no easy solution but going digital could solve some of the problems.

Publishers could think of textbooks as a set of topics and sell them piecemeal. Online newspapers are discovering this - that no one reads every article (as they had come to believe with actual newspapers). Perhaps a Netflix style model could work (unlimited access to textbooks for $10 / month). Or an iTunes style renting model (in HD with color graphics or in SD). How about scaling the price with the complexity of the topic - thus making the topics that most people want cheaper.

Could collaboratively creating parts of a textbook bring down its price? Would an ad-supported textbook be wholly inconceivable? How about selling a textbook reader (where one can annotate, take notes, share with classmates - all those things that students are supposed to do) that subsidizes the cost of the textbooks?

Will textbooks ever be as inexpensive as novels? I don't know, but i do know that the business model for textbooks is ripe for disruption.

Aquarium

It's been a year in which I haven't done as much photography or as much wildlife as I would have wanted to. That apart, it's been the best year of my life.

Grand Canyon

Yosemite

Anseladamsified.

New York Minute

Raindrops fall on the glass window, momentarily glow in the light and stream away to make way for new ones. It is 6:30 in the morning and the steady rhythm of rain is interrupted only by high pitched car horns. Not unlike James Labrie interrupting a Petrucci and Rudess jam. I am sitting in a Dunkin' Donuts and right across the street my eyes wander to a sign that reads 'Exotic Dancers'. As the sun rises, the neon glow of the sign fades away into darkness.

It is easy to stumble into a pizza place in New York. This one isn't bigger than your bedroom. It is crowded and I am the only one in it. It is run by Mexicans, who perhaps figure that the Americans can't tell the difference. 80s pop music is playing in the background, softly, almost apologetically. They rush me into my order and take their time to deliver it. I settle down with my slice on the only crimson sofa in the shop, its torn edges telling me tales of occupants past. Soon, I am joined by an European family of four. They eat their meal in silence - not because they have nothing to discuss, but because dining is a sacred bonding ritual and they don't want to sully it by making inane conversation. Once they are done, the mother takes out a bottle of water and each of them take a swig from it and then, just as quietly, they walk away. As they leave, the mexican owner points me to a sign that reads 'Seating For 15 Minutes Only'. I smile, pick up my bag and walk out into the sunshine.

"This is where the Miss Teen USA and the Miss Universe stay for the year", informs the endearing tour guide at the Trump Tower to a group of camera-totting east asian tourists. "So does Donald Trump", she lies. "Together?!" blurts a shocked girl, much to the group's amusement.

New York City is at once welcoming and hostile, courteous and impatient, real and phony, shiny and antique, small and enormous, quiet and cacophonous, energetic and laid-back, an amalgamation and a seclusion. It is a contradiction unto itself. It is imperfect and, well, human. Which is, perhaps, what makes it such an attractive city.