First, let's take their categories for the non-bookstore portion. (Face it, no matter what the publisher charges the bookstore is going to make their cut - at least they aren't shy about telling you that.)

• 32.5 (42%) -- Paper, Printing, Editorial Costs
• 15.5 (20%) -- Publisher Marketing Costs
• 11.7 (15%) -- Author Income
• 10.0 (13%) -- Publisher General and Admin
• 1.0 (1%) -- Freight Expenses
• 7.1 (9%) -- Publisher Income

OK, let's talk about these categories now:

• Paper, Printing, Editorial Costs - Paper and printing are such a small part of the cost of a book that it's embarrassing. Called PP&B in the industry (the 'B' is binding), this can run from $2 or less for a typical study guide to $12 or so for a high-quality art or biology text. So, pulling back this particular curtain, we find that the lion's share of this category is not printing but editorial costs. I won't address the relative worth of these editorial costs, but they are incurred whether publishers print a physical book or create an e-book. It's easy to see, then, that the idea of going the e-book route is not going to do much to reduce the real cost of the textbook.
• Publisher Marketing Costs - Publishers send their sales people to your professor's office to convince her/him to use their textbook. How do they do this? Certainly not by striving to produce the highest quality, most useful book imaginable. No, they give the professor armfuls of "free" stuff to help them teach the class - copies of the student text, instructor manuals, answer books, powerpoints, etc. They also dangle "free" stuff for the student to use, like student websites, bundled CDs, etc. Who do you think pays for all that free stuff? That's right, you do.
• Author Income - 15% royalties... are these guys on crack? Twenty years ago major authors were getting a 15% royalty, but not anymore. Go ahead and ask any of your professors who have written textbooks, they'll tell you. The trend over recent years is to get royalties down to 10-12%, putting more profits in the publishers' pockets.
• Publisher General and Admin - All big businesses try their damnedest to avoid paying taxes using whatever legal means are available. (We'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.)
• Freight Expenses - Can't do much with this one, except that at least one major college textbook publisher charges the bookstores a restocking fee for returned books. This will reduce some of the freight expenses, but shouldn't have much impact on the bottom-line cost of the book (although it is piss
  Presentations in Mobile Car Wash Contracts
  If you own a mobile carwash business and your are giving a presentation to a larger corporation or a company which has a fleet of vehicles the most important thing is to get those people out into the parking lot and volunteer one of them for a free carwash. Once they see you in action and see the work you can do and how your system works for picking up the waste wash water as per the NPDES environmental EPA controls, they are more apt to be convinced that you are the correct company and a good fit for their company.Despite what you may believ
  Freight Expenses
• 7.1 (9%) -- Publisher Income

OK, let's talk about these categories now:

• Paper, Printing, Editorial Costs - Paper and printing are such a small part of the cost of a book that it's embarrassing. Called PP&B in the industry (the 'B' is binding), this can run from $2 or less for a typical study guide to $12 or so for a high-quality art or biology text. So, pulling back this particular curtain, we find that the lion's share of this category is not printing but editorial costs. I won't address the relative worth of these editorial costs, but they are incurred whether publishers print a physical book or create an e-book. It's easy to see, then, that the idea of going the e-book route is not going to do much to reduce the real cost of the textbook.
• Publisher Marketing Costs - Publishers send their sales people to your professor's office to convince her/him to use their textbook. How do they do this? Certainly not by striving to produce the highest quality, most useful book imaginable. No, they give the professor armfuls of "free" stuff to help them teach the class - copies of the student text, instructor manuals, answer books, powerpoints, etc. They also dangle "free" stuff for the student to use, like student websites, bundled CDs, etc. Who do you think pays for all that free stuff? That's right, you do.
• Author Income - 15% royalties... are these guys on crack? Twenty years ago major authors were getting a 15% royalty, but not anymore. Go ahead and ask any of your professors who have written textbooks, they'll tell you. The trend over recent years is to get royalties down to 10-12%, putting more profits in the publishers' pockets.
• Publisher General and Admin - All big businesses try their damnedest to avoid paying taxes using whatever legal means are available. (We'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.)
• Freight Expenses - Can't do much with this one, except that at least one major college textbook publisher charges the bookstores a restocking fee for returned books. This will reduce some of the freight expenses, but shouldn't have much impact on the bottom-line cost of the book (although it is pis
  PPC Advertising
  The Internet is a vast web of connected computers and networks of computers around the whole world. It has a lot of potential for business advertisers to promote their services because it is able to reach a wide spectrum of users.PPC is an abbreviation for Pay Per Click in Internet terminology. It simply means a kind of advertising model in which the user pays advertisers for click-through to their website. These advertisements are based on keywords or themes and payment of this system is solely based on the qualifying click-throughs.So
  So, pulling back this particular curtain, we find that the lion's share of this category is not printing but editorial costs. I won't address the relative worth of these editorial costs, but they are incurred whether publishers print a physical book or create an e-book. It's easy to see, then, that the idea of going the e-book route is not going to do much to reduce the real cost of the textbook.
• Publisher Marketing Costs - Publishers send their sales people to your professor's office to convince her/him to use their textbook. How do they do this? Certainly not by striving to produce the highest quality, most useful book imaginable. No, they give the professor armfuls of "free" stuff to help them teach the class - copies of the student text, instructor manuals, answer books, powerpoints, etc. They also dangle "free" stuff for the student to use, like student websites, bundled CDs, etc. Who do you think pays for all that free stuff? That's right, you do.
• Author Income - 15% royalties... are these guys on crack? Twenty years ago major authors were getting a 15% royalty, but not anymore. Go ahead and ask any of your professors who have written textbooks, they'll tell you. The trend over recent years is to get royalties down to 10-12%, putting more profits in the publishers' pockets.
• Publisher General and Admin - All big businesses try their damnedest to avoid paying taxes using whatever legal means are available. (We'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.)
• Freight Expenses - Can't do much with this one, except that at least one major college textbook publisher charges the bookstores a restocking fee for returned books. This will reduce some of the freight expenses, but shouldn't have much impact on the bottom-line cost of the book (although it is pis
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  ality, most useful book imaginable. No, they give the professor armfuls of "free" stuff to help them teach the class - copies of the student text, instructor manuals, answer books, powerpoints, etc. They also dangle "free" stuff for the student to use, like student websites, bundled CDs, etc. Who do you think pays for all that free stuff? That's right, you do.
• Author Income - 15% royalties... are these guys on crack? Twenty years ago major authors were getting a 15% royalty, but not anymore. Go ahead and ask any of your professors who have written textbooks, they'll tell you. The trend over recent years is to get royalties down to 10-12%, putting more profits in the publishers' pockets.
• Publisher General and Admin - All big businesses try their damnedest to avoid paying taxes using whatever legal means are available. (We'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.)
• Freight Expenses - Can't do much with this one, except that at least one major college textbook publisher charges the bookstores a restocking fee for returned books. This will reduce some of the freight expenses, but shouldn't have much impact on the bottom-line cost of the book (although it is pis
  3 Easy Steps To Making Money Online - Proven Results
  Making money online has been complicated beyond measure! As an Internet marketer who makes a decent amount of money on the Internet, I notice that the tactics and methods being thrown around the Internet are 90% ineffective. People selling their 90 dollar E-books and whatnot, it’s completely stupid and you really shouldn’t trust these people. Making money on the Internet isn’t easy if you go it alone. This guide is about using SiteBuildIt. A program many beginners use to make as much money as the so-called “gurus”Step one: Sign up with
  nt years is to get royalties down to 10-12%, putting more profits in the publishers' pockets.
• Publisher General and Admin - All big businesses try their damnedest to avoid paying taxes using whatever legal means are available. (We'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.)
• Freight Expenses - Can't do much with this one, except that at least one major college textbook publisher charges the bookstores a restocking fee for returned books. This will reduce some of the freight expenses, but shouldn't have much impact on the bottom-line cost of the book (although it is pissing off a lot of bookstore managers).
• Publisher Income - The chart says this is 7.1%, but that's too low. At the very least it's got to be 10% or more, based solely on the reduced royalties being paid nowadays.

By conservative estimates, then, around half the cost of a textbook is attributed to the business practices of the publishing industry (editorial and marketing costs). Publishers will have you believe that E-books is the way to bring down these costs, but the figures above don't lie. Revamping the publishing industry's business practices is the only sure-fire way to bring these prices down. You have several options for helping that along -- buying used books (for which publishers get no revenue), buying the international versions of the textbooks from the UK (same book content, cheaper price because the Europeans won't buy otherwise), and simply refusing to buy the book at all. You have the power to force an industry to change!

(Check out our article on making college less expensive to see what else you can do about the high cost of getting your degree.)