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Everyone knows that textbooks are insanely expensive, and there's often a suspicion that publishers and booksellers are ripping students off. (This seems to be especially true in the US; "international editions" tend to be much cheaper.) One reaction to that has been that more and more students (and faculty) are abandoning the campus bookstores entirely, instead opting to order books online. There's been a perception that you'll get a better deal when you aren't part of a captive audience on campus.
But a student's question has just led me to notice a particularly obnoxious pricing issue on Amazon.com. I don't know whether it's intentional, but it certainly looks unpleasant. The issue is this: I am using a textbook that comes in a single volume edition and a two volume edition. If you search on Amazon.com books for "Principles of Physics Serway Jewett", the only reasonable results are Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. A handful of used books show up along with a student solution guide, but the single volume edition doesn't turn up in the results. That's the one we're using, so this is already frustrating.
On the other hand, if you go to their textbook search page and search for the single volume's ISBN (053449143X) explicitly, it turns up just fine. But here's the kicker: its listed price is about $150. If you add up the prices of Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 from the search results, it comes out to $230. That's an $80 difference, a markup of over 50% from the lower price. And I emphasize that without the exact ISBN, a student searching for the book would never even know that the less expensive option existed.
I'm rather troubled by this.
But a student's question has just led me to notice a particularly obnoxious pricing issue on Amazon.com. I don't know whether it's intentional, but it certainly looks unpleasant. The issue is this: I am using a textbook that comes in a single volume edition and a two volume edition. If you search on Amazon.com books for "Principles of Physics Serway Jewett", the only reasonable results are Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. A handful of used books show up along with a student solution guide, but the single volume edition doesn't turn up in the results. That's the one we're using, so this is already frustrating.
On the other hand, if you go to their textbook search page and search for the single volume's ISBN (053449143X) explicitly, it turns up just fine. But here's the kicker: its listed price is about $150. If you add up the prices of Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 from the search results, it comes out to $230. That's an $80 difference, a markup of over 50% from the lower price. And I emphasize that without the exact ISBN, a student searching for the book would never even know that the less expensive option existed.
I'm rather troubled by this.
no subject
I'm guessing in the textbook case Amazon is pretty much passing on the publisher's prices, which looks like gouging. Especially when combined with a search function that isn't as good as we'd like.
To be honest, I'm not sure what the issue with the search is. I just recently did a search for 'Firaxis', and they didn't manage to even list all of the games that they currently produce. So your feedback probably did help, at least in terms of pointing out that their search needs improvement.
no subject
This is one reason that I always include the ISBN on my syllabus with the textbook info so students who choose to go somewhere other than the school bookstore can be sure they are getting the exact right book. Assuming that they are clever enough about things to notice :)
Pretty standard
--Itai