The cost of textbooks seems to be a theme that catches may attention. My current audiobook (I listen while I do low attention tasks at work) is Anderson’s Long Tail. The Long Tail concerns the opportunities present when a system offers the flexibility to serve many individuals with many unique interests in contrast to providing the same product to many individuals. The sale of used books is an example from the book (both textbooks and rare books). As I understand the author’s perspective on textbooks, the present system works to allow students a way to “rent” books at a reasonable cost. An $80 book is typically rented by a student at a rate of $40 for the semester. The distribution system (the bookstore buybacks and online methods for exchanging used books) provide the means to rent an expensive product at this low rate to relatively small groups of students.
Anderson does discuss related topics – custom printing “on demand” to reduce the cost of maintaining an inventory of books within the tail, etc.
