Man, it's really unconscionable the way that textbooks juice people. There is no reason that book ought to cost $190 (what I just saw on Amazon for the hard-cover). It's across the board; once a book gets entrenched as one of these go-to textbooks for a subject, it can for some reason be marked up 400% over equivalent books.
Why? How many copies of these textbooks do you think they sell? There is about 50,000 "computer and information science" bachelors degrees awarded each year (which is broader than what you'd think of as CS). Let's say, generously, 5% take a compilers course. That's 2,500 books per year in the entire subject. Let's say any one book gets about 1,000 of those sales. At $190 per book, that's $190,000 gross. Over an entire edition, maybe you sell 2-3 times that much (considering campus book rentals, people buying used books, etc.) That's maybe $500,000 to write, edit, publish, and distribute an entire textbook. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me at all.
I think 5% is generous if you're looking not just at computer science degrees, but "computer and information science" degrees (which is what the government tracks).
The authors are already generously compensated. I am super curious how much they actually make, or is this the same as the paper paywall? Inflation adjusted this book is way more expensive than it used to be in its first version.
The hardcover version of the first edition is $2.50 in Alibris. New this book shouldn't cost more than $90.
tl;dr version: you're ignoring all the other stuff that goes into selling a textbook and grossly overestimating how much margin publishers have. Professors don't submit PDFs ready to hit "print." The books must be edited, typeset, etc. This can't be done by minimum wage workers because the editors have to actually understand what they're editing. The hypothetical $230 book nets about $40 in profit.
It seems a lot of computer science books I read that have been published lately talk about their build process (web, PDF, EPUB/MOBI) in the same way they would talk about compiling code. How much typesetting is really done these days?
Note that it is legal in the US for domestic sellers to import international editions to resell domestically, so for US people buying international editions does not necessarily mean actually buying directly from someone outside the US [2].
[2] There is, of course, nothing wrong with doing business with someone outside the US. It is just that if something goes wrong (book lost in shipment for example), it might be more difficult to resolve the issue satisfactorily if the seller is halfway around the world. The time zone difference could make talking to them difficult, as could language differences, and consumer protection provided by your credit card might only apply to domestic purchases.
A textbook represents a distillation of the author's knowledge and experience in some specific field.
You may need that knowledge now, because at some time in the future you may be earning a living from what you know in that field.
Usually a business with some knowledge gap in their practices, hires a consultant for their knowledge in that specific field. By the same token, when you buy a textbook, you are "hiring" the author/s of a textbook as consultants, to fill in some gap or need in your knowledge. How much do you think you should pay your consultants(authors) for their knowledge and experience?
And that is not such a high price - I have read from some engineering contract law, and maritime law, textbooks that were in the order of $3500 each, if I had to pay for them. I have seen some specialist medical surgery textbooks in the same ballpark price.
I almost always buy textbooks through alibris. Thier prices are typically much lower than Amazon for used books. Sometimes I have to purchase an international or the next newest edition, but I almost always get out for less than $30. I actually just bought "the dragon book" 2nd edition for $25 shipped.
You're going to make plenty of money - I've been working for a while, I don't care what things below 1000$ cost - I have more left over than I spend regardless, and the mental bandwidth that's been freed up by not having to look at prices is very rewarding.
It's scarcity vs abundance mentality.
Another way to look at it is - when you're out there working, making say a phone app, and you find out it is costing them a million dollars, and it's a bug ridden piece of shit - you'll look back on this textbook, that was written by very smart people, proofread, etc, and it only costs 190$.
Well it kind of is unique to text books. Rarely does an entrenched product get such price privilege, except perhaps Apple devices. Usually if the price becomes too high, the product becomes un-entrenched people switch to something else. University students are uniquely locked in in a way that few other consumers are.
