I'm boycotting textbooks.

Textbook prices are ridiculously inflated. Supply is monopolized and demand is inelastic. And publishers come out with new editions frequently to make it so that bookstores have to stock brand-new copies, and anyone who uses the old version will discover that all the page numbers are out of whack and they can't follow along properly. They get away with it because the professors who assign the textbooks don't have to buy them or even know how much they cost, and the students who pay for them have no choice.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, the textbook manufacturers can go to hell. I'm not paying.

If I need the book during class, I'll mooch. If I need it for homework, I'll go to the library. If the library doesn't have it, I'll go to the bookstore and read it off the shelf. And I'd happily pirate it* if I could--if you call it theft, then I'll say that's giving them a taste of their own medicine, because a hundred bucks for a textbook is highway robbery. It's not as if most of them even offer legitimate ebook editions anyway, or if they do, they price it the same as the paper edition so what's the goddamn point?

So yeah. Textbook companies can go die. I'll save my money, thank you very much.



* Disclaimer: Oh, don't take this the wrong way. Intellectual copyright violation is ethically dubious. I do not endorse digital piracy. Pirating the works of people you hate is like the scene in Jurassic Park where the Tyrannosaurus eats the jerkass lawyer. Or like this. It's awesome. But at the same time, you know that it's illegal to eat people, or to cut someone's car in half. So by all means, support your local used bookstore.