Re:Dirty thieves (Score 3, Interesting)

For several years I was the textbook buyer for a mathematics department at a large university in the US. Based on my experiences in that job, I must agree that it is the publishers making the money and pushing the new editions to hamper the sales of used books. Faculty often get "free copies" in exchange for reviewing the book (some payment, especially if you don't adopt the new text). One book rep was even honest enough to admit this to me, "off the record" as it were. There were two markets of students, and they were serviced by two groups of book sellers (this was before people started to really buy textbooks from Amazon etc). One market was served by the campus bookstore, who were supplied primarily by the publishers (and also the used textbooks sold back to them by some students). The other market, supplied entirely by used book dealers, catered to students looking for a better price than the university bookstore would give them (in all honesty, the price difference was usually very small). The faculty member I worked with when choosing books always tried very hard to keep one textbook in continuous use as long as possible. So, we encouraged faculty to use our online resources rather then the customized ones made available by the publishers (only to those who purchased new books, of course). We also asked the campus bookstore each semester how many used editions they had in stock, and only ordered enough new books to make up the difference, based on enrollment figures. Basically, we did everything we could to reuse textbooks, and the publishers did everything they could to prevent us (and the students, their real customers) from doing so. Textbooks come and textbooks go, but Calculus will live on forever...