THE COST OF POD BOOKS

I have seen where tenured professors at universities will write books, then require the students enrolled in the courses they teach to buy the book for the course. Prices for these short-run books have always been ridiculously exorbitant.

(Hence, the high activity at the university used book store, as students greedily jockey for position to buy the required books at a fat discount.)

Often they are very very low print run. How many students are in a class? 30? So no one is going to mass-print the books. POD started off in unis. That book actually says Printed to Order, hence it's POD.
Granted, the books may be saleable to students of other unis. But even so, it does not run in to the need for mass-printing.
Indeed, they are often sold used to the students coming in next year, or moving up a year, but unfortunately, such books are often updated every year, often deliberately to make the previous ones out of date!
And technical books are often expensive. But what often happens is someone will scan them and put them on line for free.

I didn't. No price is indicated. If you click on "ebook you get the message: "To purchase, visit your preferred ebook provider."

Gosh! www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9780199270927&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs

The Cabal.

I agree, Blue.

I just looked up The Cabal, the actual definition. They're the intriguers. Isn't that interesting?