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Priceonomics breaks it down: https://priceonomics.com/why-are-textbooks-so-expensive.

tl;dr version: you're ignoring all the other stuff that goes into selling a textbook and grossly overestimating how much margin publishers have. Professors don't submit PDFs ready to hit "print." The books must be edited, typeset, etc. This can't be done by minimum wage workers because the editors have to actually understand what they're editing. The hypothetical $230 book nets about $40 in profit.




It seems a lot of computer science books I read that have been published lately talk about their build process (web, PDF, EPUB/MOBI) in the same way they would talk about compiling code. How much typesetting is really done these days?




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