infoneer-pulse:

Giving validation to Occupy Wall Street protests over the increasing burdens of student debt, a new report indicates that the total amount of outstanding student loans this year will exceed $1 trillion for the first time.

In addition, the amount of student loans taken out last year was greater than $100 billion, another new record, according to USA Today, citing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

» via Politico

I’ve got roughly $40,000 in student loans from grad school (I paid off my undergrad loans with my grad loans -it was either that or deal with interest accruing while I was still in school). I am paying about $300 a month on them (and have been for 3 years now), and that’s pretty much just the interest. It sucks, but the degree is the reason I have my current job, so… *shrug* At least I’m employed.

official-which:

lemonsharks:

calimae:

In other words, publishing is a business that incurs high fixed costs. And it’s this, to return to my initial question, that accounts for the high price of (indeed the very existence of) hardbacks. The publisher needs to maximise revenues in order to defray its outlay. Some people are prepared to pay top dollar to have the premium product – a hardcover copy that comes out, crucially, months before other versions. So it makes sense for the publisher to offer it to them.

Questions of this sort have become especially pertinent recently, of course, with the arrival of an entirely new publishing format: the ebook. Most people instinctively feel that ebooks should be substantially cheaper than paper books, because an ebook is not physically “made”: there are no printing costs. But if, says Levine, the real value of a book resides in the “text itself”, then the delivery method shouldn’t much matter. The fixed costs – acquiring, editing, marketing – remain unchanged.

(I thought I already posted this, but can’t find it. Hmm…)

What I want is for ebooks to be substantially cheaper than print books until and unless they come DRM free.  Because otherwise you’re really just renting the book.

Agreed with the above. Because unless it is DRM-free you can’t really do with an ebook what you can do with a physical book imo.

*deletes lengthy rant on Amazon that has almost nothing to do with the article linked*

I definitely agree. The present ability of ebook vendors to alter and remove texts that you have “purchased” means that you don’t actually own the ‘text itself’ (to borrow a term from the article), so the pricing ought to reflect that reality.

(Source: twitter.com)

In other words, publishing is a business that incurs high fixed costs. And it’s this, to return to my initial question, that accounts for the high price of (indeed the very existence of) hardbacks. The publisher needs to maximise revenues in order to defray its outlay. Some people are prepared to pay top dollar to have the premium product – a hardcover copy that comes out, crucially, months before other versions. So it makes sense for the publisher to offer it to them.

Questions of this sort have become especially pertinent recently, of course, with the arrival of an entirely new publishing format: the ebook. Most people instinctively feel that ebooks should be substantially cheaper than paper books, because an ebook is not physically “made”: there are no printing costs. But if, says Levine, the real value of a book resides in the “text itself”, then the delivery method shouldn’t much matter. The fixed costs – acquiring, editing, marketing – remain unchanged.

(I thought I already posted this, but can’t find it. Hmm…)

(Source: twitter.com)

The suggestions in this article are so wrong in so many ways… For example, I can guarantee that if fees were assessed by how many items you checked out, the number of items being checked out would rapidly drop, so the amount of money raised will not match the expectation. So even though his town circulated 600,000 items in 2010, there is no way the library would be able to raise $300,000 by charging 50 cents per item.  My public library used to charge $1 to check out a DVD, but they stopped that a couple of years ago and I’m betting the DVDs are circulating much better now (there’s certainly a better selection than there used to be, but I don’t know if the fee had anything to do with the selection).

The comments may be the best part of this article.

A good counterpoint article: Why We Need Free Public Libraries More Than Ever

(Source: twitter.com)

The Kindle Textbook Rental program also lets students configure the length of the rental, from 30 days to 360 days. Of course, the longer you rent, the more expensive it becomes. A $100 Kindle purchase can be rented for $40 for a month, but that quickly increases the longer you keep the book - and most students will keep it for at least a semester. It’s still cheaper to buy used textbooks in most cases, and when you buy a physical book, of course, you can keep the book or sell it back as you deem fit.

(Source: twitter.com)

While I’m aware that it costs money to organize the flow of manuscripts through the peer review system, and that those online portals are costly to develop, I think it’s worth noting that at the same time that federal funding for basic research is at risk and libraries are scrambling to cover yet another year of tight budgets, Elsevier had profits of over a billion, with a 36% profit margin. At those rates, we could afford an open access publishing system and everyone could access research findings.

Recently,ALA retweeted a tweet that originally came from @FSG_Books. It was a library haiku that read:A library card / is a 100% off / coupon for great books. This is a misconception throughout libraries everywhere. A library card isn’t a 100% off coupon. A library card is a tool that allows users to take advantage of the services and materials that have already been purchased for them. People who use the library and borrow those books have already paid for them. They’re not free books when the people borrowing them have already paid for them.

This post (and its comments) illustrate very nicely how the relative cost of print books vs. e-books depends a lot on the individual and their tastes.

Last year, I wrote a post for Teleread on the true cost of ebooks, using my own collection as an example. The recent dialogue between Rich Adin and I on the relative costs of print books (in which real estate for paper book storage is a factor) vs ebooks (in which device costs and higher list prices due to no secondary markets are a factor) had me re-examining this issue. So, how did my ebook costs net out?

I hardly buy any books at all (yay for the public library), so print would undoubtedly be a better value for me.  I think.  Perhaps I ought to break it down like this post did, and see how much e-versions of some of my wish-list books would cost electronically vs. print.

(Source: twitter.com)

What’s the mental burden of trying to do something? What’s it cost? What price are you going to pay if you try to do something out in the world?

I like this because it points out that the physical effort of doing something isn’t the only factor in getting things done.

(Source: twitter.com)