Reply #9: OK, I used to work for Thomson

[Book Lover]

so I think I can, if you are interested, talk with some intelligence about the bundle you saw on your shelf.

The main book (which, if you were still taking the class, you could buy direct from Thomson from this page http://e-catalog.thomsonlearning.com/150l/ , though I don't see the study guide for sale) is 1376 4-color pages. Now, I used to work production so I can say that the budget to produce that book was very likely in the area of $100-120,000 (development editing, illustrations and art editing, copy editing, page layout, etc). That does not include the printing and binding (I'm much fuzzier here, but I think an estimate of $5-9 per unit is fair. So if this book had a print run of about 10,000 - likely - that'd be an additional $50-90,000 to the overall budget), nor the college bookstore markup (25-40% I have seen on campus), nor the NOW budget, which is probably around $25,000.

The Study Guide, if it's 4-color, I'd estimate to be about a quarter of the above figures. Ditto the lab manual. Oh, and let's not forget that the author gets his 12% royalty. Then the useful (me, the production staff, the archivists, salesmen) and the not-useful (marketing, back-end, top-heavy administration) staffers get to get paid.

So the margins are large, yes, but not huge. And it's not all going into one pocket (unless you count the CEO) - it takes many people to make even a simple one-color textbook.

OK, flame away.