"This International Student Edition is for use outside the U.S."

[mike_c]

The primary textbook I adopted for my university general zoology class is a McGraw-Hill Higher Ed text. The "U.S. edition" is hardbound and costs about $230.00, while the "international edition," which bears the warning in the subject line on its front cover, is softcover perfect bound but is otherwise identical to the U.S. edition. Except that I bought mine for $45 (brand new, shrink wrapped) rather than $230. The publisher "forbids" sale of the international edition in the U.S., but it's available online from some booksellers, some of which might actually be outside the U.S.

The hard cover text is clearly better value for the money-- I mean, students who buy that book can likely use it as a reference for many years, while the perfect bound edition will undoubtedly fall apart with age and use. I still have most of my own college texts thirty + years later, so I appreciate long term value in books. There is great intrinsic value in a well constructed book that will last for decades of reference use.

But still, it's equally clear that U.S. students are being charged as much as the market will bear without regard to the actual cost of producing the text they're being sold, and that publishers who follow the practice of producing special "U.S. editions" are taking as much profit from U.S. students as they possibly can, similar to the way big pharma prices drugs differently for the U.S. market than for most other countries. If they can afford to sell the text everywhere else for $45, and that still leaves book sellers some room for markup, then clearly they could afford to sell the same text for approximately the same price in the U.S., perhaps a bit more for the hardbound edition for those who take the long view of text ownership.

Anyway, this chaps my hide. /rant

[Half-Century Man]

1. Generally,we pay the most for mediocre

We're number meh..............

[knitter4democracy]

2. What gets me is paying almost the same for a digital edition.

Many of my textbooks in my master's program are available in digitial editions, but often they are the same price or just five dollars less or so. That's ridiculous!

[Igel]

3. Yup.

Sometimes I get a Pearson international edition. Sometimes I don't. One non-Pearson edition conveniently left out the front matter, including the copyright info: I suspect it's pirated.

The books can certainly be produced for less. On the other hand, a lot of the international editions don't yield much revenue, even though they're a lot cheaper.

That includes revenue for things like paying the staff that manages production or the time spent in writing and editing the actual books. Yeah, some executives make millions. But most of the salaries and wages are still paid to non-executive workers in the West.

So we get revenue for things like paying over-priced Westerners to run the printing presses and distribute. Much cheaper to outsource production to someplace with far lower standards of living. Heck, we could outsource all sorts of things to overseas, I'm sure. And that's the problem: Each of us approves of decisions to outsource that saves us money, but disapproves of it when it benefits others.

The overall pricing is a mix. Mostly it's "from each according to his ability."

And let's not even consider stock prices. I mean, we look at private investors and comment on them. Some of the largest investors, though, are institutional: State pension funds, union pension funds.