another part of the problem with academic book publishing
2/12/2008
The publishers have made the standard edition (ISBN-10: 0815341059) of MBOTC more "portable" by not printing the final 5 chapters of the book, but including them as electronic files on the DVD. While these chapters are included, in print, in this reference edition (0815341113), take a look at the price differential between the two. If, as publishers might like us to believe, portability is such a great feature for a textbook, then why should students be expected to pay a premium for this less than portable reference edition?
The chapters in question are:
21-Sexual Reproduction: Meiosis, Germ Cells, and Fertilization
22-Development of Multicellular Organisms
23-Specialized Tissues, Stem Cells, and Tissue Renewal
24-Pathogens, Infection, and Innate Immunity
25-The Adaptive Immune System
With the 4th edition there were 25 printed chapters and 1616 pages: $5.68/printed chapter, or ~8.8 cents/page based on my calculations using list price info. With the regular 5th edition, 20 printed chapters, 1268 pages: $7.10/printed chapter, or ~11.2 cents/page. And with the reference edtition, 25 printed chapters and 1728 pages: $8.36/printed chapter, or ~12.1 cents/page. So the page cost for this reference edition has increased by over 1/3 as compared to the last edition, and is about 8% higher than for the regular 5th edition. Admittedly, I am a major geek for actually doing these calculations.
I am giving the book 2 stars for content, because it really is a solid resource for learning molecular biology. However, with so many students carrying a heavy burden of debt upon graduation, it's a shame to see the continuing trend of exorbitant prices for the best texts, making them just another contributor to the problems with education today.
Books available online
2/17/2008
Dr Dotson's comments on the price of textbooks are well taken, but he maybe should have mentioned that the previous (4th) edition of MBOTC was available online for free for at least the last two years, at
[...]
along with many other fine health science and molecular biology books, many of them the most recent edition, some down loadable as PDFs.
It remains to be seen if Bruce Alberts can prevail on Garland to make the current edition available on line as well.
It may also be worth mentioning that selling used textbooks online through Amazon is very easy, and if you sell them before a new edition comes out, you often can recoup 1/3 to 1/2 of original purchase price. So as soon as you know that one of those expensive tomes on your shelf is a dog, list it online immediately while it still has value. And if on the other hand you know you will have to get the new edition of a book when it is available, dump the previous edition just before a new one is due, and use the money toward the new edition.