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From: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox)
Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
Subject: Re: the high cost of text books!
Message-ID: <841@novavax.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 88 07:55:17 GMT
References: <278@heurikon.UUCP> <6304@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <4959@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: maddoxt@novavax.UUCP (Thomas Maddox)
Organization: Nova University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Lines: 48

In article <4959@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>In article <6304@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
>writes:
>>...your local bookstore gets a
>>VERY small percentage of that cover price. The reasoning of the
>>publisher is, "they have a guaranteed market and sell hundreds of the
>>things, so they don't need a big margin".
>
>The bookstore decides what margin it wants;  publishers have no say in
>deciding at what price a bookstore will sell textbooks.

	Unless things have changed radically in bookstores in recent
years, bookstores in most instances follow publishers' prices with
essentially mindless fidelity.

	The baselines used to be these:

	"trade book" (hardcover, large paperback)--discounted 40% to
the bookseller (he pays $6.00 for a $10.00 book);

	"textbook" (a classification assigned by the publisher and
including not only books obviously intended only as texts but certain
others that the publishers had found sold *mostly* as
texts)--discounted 20% to the bookseller (he pays $8. 00 for a $10.00
book);

	miscellaneous others at 30% (small paperbacks gotten from a
local wholesaler, etc.);

	certain very privileged books (ones that the publisher is
hustling, such as very large run popular novels)--50% (i.e., what a
retailer expects on damned near everything).  

	In all these instances, the bookseller pays postage (both ways
on returns, quite common with texts).  

	So if you want to know why obscene operations such as
Waldenbooks and B. Dalton are taking over the world, look at these
figures to begin with.  Then consider the commented-upon fact that
publishers no longer can take a tax break on backstock and that most
mundane of facts, the high price of mailing books.  Combined with
computerization of the book trade, these add up to an oligopoly of 
massive wholesaler sells to massive retailer, and the individual
bookseller, once the backbone of the trade, struggles at best.  

	One could probably tell a similar story about grocery stores.

	Anyone want to comment upon, add to, or update these figures?