Re: OT Prices (was Re: Books on Translation

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003 15:58:14 -0500 Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

> Re outrageous prices.......
> Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:
>
>
> >Well, if you really want to know... :)
> >My day job consists of persuading professors
> to adopt the textbooks my
> >employer publishes. And one of the many
> pricing criteria seems to be
> "whatever
> >the market will bear".
>
> Ah yes, I was in that racket too, for a few
> years back in the 60s (and a
> very nice job it was-- leaving it for grad
> school was in hingsight a Bad
> Career Move), before the days of inflation.  We
> gave away samples with
> abandon-- in some cases, more were given away
> than were ever actually sold.
> That policy has no doubt changed.
Not really. One can't expect a professor to adopt a book if he/she doesn't
have it at hand. Then, after adopting it, they expect another free copy for
home, the computerized test bank, the power point slides, the overhead
transparencies, the video set,  the solutions manual, etc. It can get
expensive.

One prof wanted several videos from our video library, claiming an adoption of
250 books (1 video per 50 books = 5 videos). However, her campus bookstore
only bought 65 copies of the book. She wondered how that could be, and when I
told her the bookstore was probably buying used books, she decided that
"cheaper" books for her students were worth getting only one video.

> Seriously, there are some good reasons for the
> higher
> >pricing, one of which is size of expected
> market. If you want to know more,
> >email me offlist and I'll do my best to
> explain it to you.
>
> The scholarly publishers have the bad, but
> understandable, habit of only
> publishing as many copies as can realistically
> be sold to (mostly)
> university libraries, with a handful left over
> for private buyers. The don't
> expect the general public to clamor for a
> Tocharian Dictionary.... I know
> Oxford (Clarendon) had the policy of keeping
> _everything_ in print, but that
> may have changed too.
Ah yes, university presses... Fun titles, very limited market and small print
runs. One thing they have going for them is that they are subsidized by the
universities and thus don't have to make a profit to survive.

-Sylvia

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
kelen@ix.netcom.com