Bureaucrats

Textbooks aren't expensive because of printing costs. They're expensive because the business
is a racket.

I have a copy of the Unicode standard sitting on my desk right now, 1,500 pages, hard cover,
well-bound. It cost $60 with free shipping. I have the Chicago Encyclopedia in my bookshelf.
Over 1,000 pages, very well printed with a *lot* of plates. I can't remember how much it cost
but it wasn't much over $50. I also have a very slim book from school (about 250 pages,
printed practically on magazine stock) about computational theory, $120. 

I compare technical books, printed using expensive methods, being offered on the open market
with those being offered for consumption in classrooms and every time there's a *good* 50%
markup on the latter. Why is the dragon book so fucking expensive? Because it's a hardcover?
Because it's *so* expensive to print 800 pages? 

Hardly. It's because it's intended as a textbook, where the people who are buying it are doing
so because they're forced to rather than because it's a good value. For the record I got my
copy of the Dragon book used, and if I had to pay full price I wouldn't own it, I would have
chosen one of the many more reasonably priced compiler books.

Had the OLPC really taken off and had it really been used as a textbook operating platform, it
wouldn't have saved one *red cent* on the cost of the books. The publishers still would have
demanded their cut. They would have insisted on DRM that would have made the MPAA blush before
they would even *consider* such a platform. And then the selection of which e-book for what
absurd price would have gone through the same corrupt process that occurs now for the dead
tree variety. 

In fact after they got greedy with the DRM and started nickel and dimeing (you have to pay
extra for the kids to read them after school hours!) it probably would have ended up costing
quite a bit more, on top of the investment in the computer.