Sticker shock

I yawned when NYPIRG put out this report on textbook prices in 2008, for which dereliction due punishment is being delivered. Today I paid $96.20 at the HVCC book store for a modestly sized paperback needed for a required social services course. It's the seventh edition of "Essential Interviewing," and I guess they've got to come up with royalties for all four of the academics who are credited for its 304 pages.

Comments

[Brian]

Payback's a b---

[John Warren]

What's just as annoying is that the educator didn't bother to take the price into account when assigning the book. There is ALWAYS a cheaper option.

[J]

less than $5 on ABEbooks
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=Essential+Interviewing&x=76&y=8

[Matthew]

Welcome to the higher education textbook racket.

Watch when you try & "sell it back" to the school bookstore, it'll either be discontinued for a new edition that changes next to nothing or offer you something ridiculous like $5 for it.

In the future (assuming you don't do this already), try & get the textbook list (ISBN's are extremely helpful) from your teachers prior to the semester & buy them used off of Amazon or Half.com.

[Johannah Turner]

This has always been a problem. The school bookstore will also rip you off, exactly as noted above. Barnes & Noble in NYC had a second-hand textbook section, but also expensive. Best to try and get a copy on your own as others have already suggested. In my (part-time) college days (1960s), there was no Internet, no Amazon, no Alibris, no ABE Books! I got a break when I was taking advanced Spanish literature courses. There was a little store on West 23rd Street (NYC) that carried a wide range of Spanish literature--classic, contemporary, medieval, you name it--in extremely cheap editions imported mostly from South America, some from Spain. Usually the paper would be tissue thin and the binding unstable, but the print was always legible and the book very lightweight--perfect!

[Brian]

I love who they had a new edition every year of textbooks for subjects like calculus and physics. History's one thing but 2+2 equals the same thing now as it did 20 years ago. An apple drops from a tree at the same velocity as it did in the 1970s. I mean come on!

[Bob Conner]

Right, but at least there you've got (in physics) a potentially changing body of knowledge. I've been interviewing and communicating for a living most of my adult life, but now must take a course in techniques of interviewing/communication, the textbook on which has gone through seven editions. (I do expect/hope to learn things about interviewing in a social services context.)

[Brian]

Perhaps but the body of knowledge of physics does not change enough to justify ANNUAL changes to textbooks.