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Comment by fabian2k | Hacker News Reader

The fundamental problem is that the people selecting the books aren't the ones paying for them in US colleges. There isn't much incentive to choose cheaper books.

But that seems to be mostly because courses require very specific books, which certainly could be changed. My experience in Germany was very different, for almost all courses there were no required textbooks, only recommended ones. You were free to buy them, don't buy them, buy different ones or rent books from the library. And the prices are much lower, the most expensive textbook I bought was 80 EUR.

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Coming from Germany, I find it hard to understand the scope of the problem described in the article. In my course, less than half the students bought any textbook at all during their entire bachelor's program. The professors made almost all their lecture notes available online and if you needed a textbook, there were plenty stocked in the library.

Same in France. I've never bought a single textbook, as we either had to take notes during classes, or study documents printed by professors for us. Many professors would actually either write handouts notes, or ask student at some point to write one and would let anyone download it the years after.

They sometimes recommended books for us, that were sold for 30-40 € in any library.

> And the prices are much lower, the most expensive textbook I bought was 80 EUR.

That's because all parts of the world that aren't the US or Canada get the international edition of textbooks, which is much cheaper and more often than not page-for-page exactly the same.

This isn't only the case for books, by the way. I've heard stories of North American students having to pay over 50 or even 100 USD for MyMathLab for a single course. On the other hand, at my European university, a MyMathLab code is 15 EUR.

What's up with these "international editions"? I've seen textbooks with strongly reduced prices that were only supposed to be sold in third-world country, which makes sense to me. But surely the publishers don't consider every country outside the US and Canada a third-world country in need of cheaper textbooks?

BTW, the cheaper prices here in Europe don't only apply to the original English editions, but also to translations. Quick checkup on Amazon.com vs. Amazon.de:

  Begon, Ecology, 4th edition: 86.73$ vs. 53.99€ (= 67.39$) -> original English edition
  Campbell Biology, 10th edition: 246.62$ vs. 99.95€ (= 124.75$) -> German translation

Why the heck is that?

> But surely the publishers don't consider every country outside the US and Canada a third-world country in need of cheaper textbooks?

Apparently, they do. I suppose competition might be healthier here: if a lot of students were to complain to a lecturer that the textbook for his course was prohibitively expensive, they would probably look into possible alternatives.

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