books breaking the bank

i just bought my books for my two classes this semester and nearly lost my breakfast when i saw the grand total: $200 for 3 books (one book only cost $4)!!! $200!!! we're not lawyers yet! just because we're in law school doesn't mean we magically start rolling in the bank. $200 is still a lot of money, especially when we're paying $1500 per credit hour. i mean, with $200 you can buy a lot of things:

7 boxes of 150-count pampers diapers
100 boxes of gerber rice cereal
10 copies of disney's beauty and the beast, platinum dvd version, of course!
20 copays for doctors' visits
200 boxes of green giant frozen vegetables
40 visits to culver's for concrete ice cream mixers
2 tri-monthly trips to the grocery store
8 haircuts, plus generous tip
7 months worth of membership fees at the local gym

so instead of spending that $200 on all these other worthwhile purchases, i plop all that cash down for a piddly 3 books that i will use for one semester, after which i will try desperately to sell those books at the campus bookstore for a measly $20 only to discover that a NEW version of the book came out and the one i have is now only good for fire kindling. how nice. so in the end, i spend $200 for fire kindling.

academic books are outrageous. i can understand why some books are expensive. take my hubby's dissertation for example: one day this stack of paper may end up getting published. and if hubby's predictions are correct, the book will be a surefire cure for insomnia, but it will likely fall a tad short of the new york times' best seller list. a book like this, in order to turn any profit or really just to break even, must be sold for approximately $50-$100 a copy. no joke. these tryptophan-containing texts are expensive because they never sell more than 10 or 20 copies and those 10 or 20 copies have to pay for themselves. so, while outrageous, it makes sense.

but law books don't really fall into this category. my first year law books ran me about $800 (for 4 classes). each of my classes had well over 100 students in them. someone out there is rolling in some major dough. once a law professor chooses a book, especially those teaching first-year courses, the author of said book is guaranteed 100+ sales of his book. and then the next month, when said author puts out another version of said book, he is guaranteed another 100+ sales. and this is from just one class. in michigan alone there are 6 law schools. illinois has 9 law schools.  new york has 15. there are a ton of law schools all in need of these highly specific course texts. so why in the world are we paying upwards of $150 per book???

i'm not an economics guru, not even close. i can't even balance my own checkbook, let alone begin to understand the complexities of supply and demand and our capitalist economy. but i'm sure the reason for the high cost for these law texts is that publishers know we'll pay the steep prices. sure, some woman will likely complain about it on her blog, but that's really all she's going to do. it would take a nationwide boycott and that's just not going to happen, ever, because i would say a large majority of law students are fresh out of their mothers' wombs and, therefore, they have no concept of money and how much $200 is really worth (other than 200 cans of pabst blue ribbon's finest).

an thus ends my rant about law books, at least until i go to the bookstore to sell them back for pocket change.