Breaking Down the Profits: Who Gets Your Money When You Buy Textbooks?

Breaking Down the Profits: Who Gets Your Money When You Buy Textbooks

?

One major college expense that many freshmen forget to include in their budgets when they're first starting out is textbooks. Everyone assumes that if they have enough money to get to school and pay for tuition, they'll be fine, but this is often completely incorrect. A first-year college student can expect to pay anywhere from $200-$700 or more a semester just for textbooks! While many students bemoan the costs of textbooks, they don't really know where their money is going and who is profiting from these outrageously expensive books.

If you buy brand new textbooks, it's actually the publisher who gets most of the money. About 35%-40% of the money you pay for your book goes to the publisher's profit, which means that the cost of printing, paying the author, shipping, and advertising come out of a different percentage of your book's cost.

Book publishing is a pretty specialized industry, which means that supply and demand plays a big role in what you pay for your college textbooks. Since professors generally like to use the most updated version of a text, a publisher will come out with a new edition of a popular textbook nearly every year. This makes it inconvenient for students to buy used books, even if not much has changed between one year's books and another's.

This is just one of the tactics that publishers use to try to get more money from your pocket. When you're buying technical books in areas like math and the sciences, you can expect to pay even more than you would for a humanities book. While a sophomore English major can get away with an anthology that is a few years old, a sophomore chemistry major might absolutely need the newest available text, since a few things could be significantly different.

So, the next time that you head to the book store to pick up your books for the semester, remember that it isn't actually the book seller who is making a killing from your hard-earned money, but that the publisher is making the most profit from the books you need for your classes. If you're creative, though, you can come up with plenty of ways to get around giving book publishers hundreds or thousands of dollars a year. Even if it these tactics don't make publishers drop their prices, they can definitely help you save a few bucks! Always remember to head over to Booksniper's textbook buyback page after the semester to get some of that cash back!

POST COMMENT

6 Good Habits For A Highly Effective Book Marketing Campaign Final Phase Fat Loss Scam Top 5 Mistakes made by Online Marketers. Don't make these mistakes and sabotage your promotional efforts Fbf Plan Diet Scam Don't Miss Out On The Benefits Of Article Marketing By Not Doing It Right market and country out of control 5 Minute Membership Sites Review – Is 5 Minute Membership Sites A Scam? Suggestions For Winners In The Shares Market Direct Marketing Exceptional Marketing Method Forex Price Movement - Understand It and Make Bigger Currency Trading Profits Profitable Forex Trading Strategy - You Can Use to Make Huge Regular Trading Profits Article Marketing For Coaches - 4 Simple Ways To Attract Your Target Market What Extenze Scam Is All About