The Isolation of Academia

Every serious publication that professors put out seem to cost an absurd amount of money.

I was reminded of this fact when a Google search recommended a particular book, which it provided a preview of. I looked through the preview a bit, then decided to check out the Amazon page of the book to see if it might be worth buying.

It's more than $43, and the only reason it's that cheap is that it's a paperback. Surprise, surprise, it only has one customer review on Amazon. Overpriced books don't generally bring in a huge readership. Then there was this book, recommended by Amazon for people on the page I was just looking at. Another paperback, this time $52.

Do the authors think that their analysis is worth its weight in gold?

But this is so typical it isn't even funny. The textbook for my Calculus class costs over $120.

People can whine about the pricey tuition, but maybe getting an education would be a little more affordable if self-indulgent professors would join us in the 21st century and make use of cheaper methods of distribution.

After all, they can't pretend that the costs all have to do with publishing. I was somehow able to purchase this book, which is more than 700 pages long, for a mere $14.46. It isn't as though it's written by an amateur, either; the guy is a professional in cognitive science and computer science. So why does everyone else seem to have a hard time charging anything less than fifty bucks?

It is, in my view, a university cartel. The publishers know both that university libraries will purchase the books, and that the students taking classes which require the books will have to buy them. Of course, paying for such overpriced material for the libraries will be just one more reason that tuition will have to be increased.

If these people were serious about helping others to become informed, they would make serious efforts to publish their works in an affordable way. There is no room to be snide about other people's ignorance when you're charging 120 bucks before letting them see anything you have to offer on the subject.