Hi, I'm a publisher and I'm really sad reading some of these replies. Yes we turn a $5 textbook into $500. And yes we don't pay the authors anything. In fact, we routinely work together to make sure they can't even go anywhere else and get paid. Yes, we exploit laws and have lobbyists in every government to protect our interests.
But we are people too! We have feelings! And it hurts to read some of the replies that blame us for being greedy. We are, but it still hurts hearing it. Please do better internet!!
So glad I left the publishing industry. I went in with a lot of respect many years ago, but it was so gross. All about how much money could be milked from students. Accuracy of information was in second or third place of importance
100%. They ripping off students selling books that are often complete garbage. In my experience "calculus" is a great example. The material is completely ossified in like the 1700s. The books are worthless tomes of useless calculations (especially in the age of computers). The whole system is about taking money, filtering people by useless exercises, and keeping people brainwashed and controllable. There's almost zero mathematical education. If they're lucky, the fundamental theorem of calculus will be mentioned for a few minutes. That's the peak of most people's education in math. It's pathetic.
I don't even get postsecondary for a good chunk of areas... Like computer programming, for example. Why would anybody need a degree that says "I don't know how to read textbooks, use Google, and learn in my own"? I'm sure there are lots of degrees just like that
In publishers' ongoing fight to shutdown pirate sites, Cengage, Elsevier, Macmillan Learning, and McGraw Hill filed a lawsuit on June 5 accusing Google of promoting pirated copies of their textbooks. In the suit, the publishers are seeking unspecified monetary damages as well as a court order to prevent Google from engaging in further copyright infringement.