"The angriest group of captive customers to be found anywhere"

.....The college textbook industry, while not abandoning traditional books, seems to be moving toward e-books, i.e., online subscriptions that give students access to a book for a semester or two. So says an article in this morning’s New York Times (First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.).
.....According to the article, the “digital transition” is tough for all book publishers, but it is especially tough for the college textbook crowd because students have zero sympathy for publishers and they’re often more than willing to rip ‘em off. “College students may be the angriest group of captive customers to be found anywhere,” says the author.
.....Websites that specialize in providing digital versions of textbooks for free keep popping up. Publishers keep stamping ‘em out, but it isn’t easy.
.....The Times article focuses on a particular textbook—“Organic Chemistry” by John E. McMurry—which lists for $209.95 and is usually sold at the discount price of $150. That’s expensive, and students certainly see it that way. And so, increasingly, students opt for used books. In this case, a used copy goes for $110.
.....But the popularity of used textbooks reduces profits, and so prices go up and students are more inclined than ever to buy used.
.....E-books potentially could change all that. The e-book version of “Organic Chemistry” sells (rents?) for $109.99. Selling an e-book cuts out the middleman (the bookstore), since the sale is directly to students, and it reduces the number of used books at the end of the semester.

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.....The issue of the high cost of textbooks has been simmering for years in the SOCCCD. Students grumble endlessly, though they seem to do nothing beyond grumbling and buying used texts. Student government sometimes speaks for students, but student government, in our district, has a stake in bookstore profits, since that is a major source of revenue for them. Trustees (e.g., Wagner, Fuentes) sometimes zero in on this student government gravy train, but that usually just pisses everybody off.
.....It’s too soon to tell whether this e-book innovation will amount to anything. After all, students might well regard the scheme as another publisher rip-off.
.....I kinda hope it works.

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.....Lately, DtB has been discussing the sorry state of our democracy. In my opinion, there is nothing sorrier than that democratic institution known as student government, at least what I've seen of it at our colleges. Undoubtedly, some good kids pop up there, but mostly it’s just a very expensive joke run (typically) by manifestly self-serving jokers. Most students seem not even aware that student government exists. Knowing how painful the textbook cost problem is for students, and knowing that one reason for the problem is the status quo re student government, it is very hard to watch typically hapless student officers give budget reports at board meetings and not wonder: maybe we oughta just pull the goddam plug.
.....You know how much I hate to agree with the likes of Wagner and Fuentes. But, at the very least, student government ought to get out of the book selling business.