They're too expensive.
Best,
Karenne
More reasons I don't like most textbooks?
(scroll past this one).
p.s. I'm going to do a Ken Wilson on you: there is a post... coming up quite soon, breaking down the real costs in the average production of the average course book and explaining how it all works... but in the meantime, d'ya think books are worth the price we pay for them? Why / why not?
How much do they cost in your country? How is this price determined? Do you or your school ever not buy books due to their cost?
Posts
I'd be interested in comparing the cost of a textbook to the cost of photocopies for a typical non-textbook course (noting that not all teachers teach materials-lite!) Ditto for the environmental impact of each.
And a copy of Raymond Murphy's tax files for the past 20 years would be interesting too.
Too expensive for who?
Hi Pat, students/language institutions ... and probably the publishers themselves (production)...
Hi Alex, I think it depends on the country... in Ecuador some of the um, not on the up&up, schools photocopied entire books for probably a third of the retail price, here in Germany it seems to be an enormous waste of money IMHO as buying the book at €25-30 would be cheaper option... but I dunno, don't really use books that much these days ;-)
What happens in Japan?
Sputnik, RM deserves every penny he ever made. Hope he puts some of it back in the scholarship pot though ;-)