Textbooks Too Expensive?

The New York Times just ran an interesting article about how the same textbooks you’re using at Stanford sell for half as much overseas. As a result, some students have started ordering their textbooks from England (or even Singapore) and having them shipped here.

Many students, individually, have begun to compare the textbook prices posted on American sites like Amazon.com, with the lower prices for the same books on foreign sites like Amazon.co.uk.

The differences are often significant: “Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, Third Edition,” for example, lists for $146.15 on the American Amazon site, but can be had for $63.48, plus $8.05 shipping, from the British one. And “Linear System Theory and Design, Third Edition” is $110 in the United States, but $41.76, or $49.81 with shipping, in Britain.

Read the whole story.