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It has gotten to the point that at some public schools, the costs of the books may rival and even exceed the costs of the class. Many instructors in choosing texts will now consider the cost to the student as a primary selection criterion, but still it may be difficult to find even a paperback for under three figures. Why does this happen?

The model used by publishers is broken. If you need proof, look at the profitability of the textbook divisions and the consolidation of the industry. Textbook publishers are bleeding, so they raise the price of texts and shorten the cycles, and now new texts are coming out in as little as two years (and often "predated," so that you may see 2010 copyrights released early in 2009). There are a number of factors here. Importantly, a book may be resold many times to reappear frequently as a used copy (I'm told a book averages 9 turns). Add in borrowing (and now renting), legal or more typically illegal copying, and the publishers are lucky to supply 10% of the demand for texts with new books. Granted, publishers themselves obtain used copies and will resell them, but this is only modestly beneficial for them. Now factor in the small production runs not only for reduced demand but for "special interest" classes (as opposed to the big lecture, multi-section broad appeal classes), as well as the costs involved in personal selling, promotion (including promotional and free desk copies), distribution, administration, warehousing and handling, publishing costs (writers, editors, permissions, printing, graphics, etc.), overhead, etc., and these publishers are on hard times.

So they try other options, like on-line versions, which are very inexpensive to distribute and may be offered at perhaps half the price of the hard copy, but students want their hard copy because of the portability as well as the easy of reading (Who wants to read a computer screen for hours at a time?) Online distribution won't work, in my opinion, until an appliance makes it attractive for readers. So if somebody comes up with an iPod device for print, maybe. (And I'm sure there must be lots of people working on this. If not, there's another billion-dollar idea I just gave someone) Publishers also offer professors "a la carte" versions of a text that can be built to order, where only certain chapters may be included to reduce the cost. Some professors do this, but it is not a popular option yet.

So the price of books keeps going up, and students then seek lower-priced options on Amazon, eBay, and cheaper options than the school bookstore, so the bookstores and publishers then increase their mark-ups, impelling students to seek cheaper options, and before you know it it's heading up toward a thousand dollars a semester to buy new books for a full-time student.

Now don't even get me started on the you-need-a-car-to-get-to-work-and-need-to-work-to- get-a-car thing.