forsyth: (Default)
Forsyth ([personal profile] forsyth) wrote2006-08-21 10:26 pm
Entry tags:

Math is Delicious

But fucking expensive. How the crap are school books $160?! Okay, I know part of how, low print runs, printing's expensive, multiple authors to pay, and locked in inflexible demand they can charge whatever the fuck they want to for them. But seriously. A hundred and sixty fucking dollars?

But that aside, I've remembered how much I enjoy math. I almost want to get the QC "Math is Delicious" shirt, but I don't like bright red shirts much. Otherwise I'd be all over that.

Still. Yay for school.

[identity profile] surlyben.livejournal.com 2006-08-22 05:26 am (UTC)(link)
They print 'em on sheets of gold...

[identity profile] surlyben.livejournal.com 2006-08-22 05:28 am (UTC)(link)
A good textbook might actually be worth that. I have a physics textbook on special relativity that I still use from time to time. Of course, it was about thirty bucks. And most $160 textbooks aren't necessarily all that good...

[identity profile] forsythferret.livejournal.com 2006-08-22 03:32 pm (UTC)(link)
A good textbook could be. Especially if I were to get transported back in time or something where I'd have to rebuild modern science via it. But as that won't happen and I'm here where texbooks are common and mass-produced, there doesn't seem to be any reasonable reason to have texbooks be QUITE so expensive. I know from hanging around with comic people that printing's expensive, and these are thick books, with multiple authors who probably had to put in a lot of time, and with low-ish print runs. But I think the captive audience factor is the biggest one in the texbooks being so damned expensive. Demand's inflexible, so the prices can be whatever.