I work for a company I first encountered when paying “way too much” for their physics textbook in 1974. It cost $15.15! The price is now $150.58 at Amazon, seven editions on.

One might reasonably ask, if the Consumer Price Index has risen by 353 percent in that time, why has the price of this textbook risen by 894 percent?

Because it’s not just a textbook anymore. We also provide a password-protected website, a gateway to electronic lecture enhancements (clickers), and homework and test banks for instructors. And probably many, many other nifty tricks and devices I know not of.

And the textbook itself is vastly more expensive to produce. Where the 1974 version was black and white with simple line drawings and a few photographs, the 2007 version is full-color throughout, with terrific graphics on nearly every page.

Also, we have to edit the text scrupulously to adhere to whatever the current standards of political correctness are.

Most of this labor is manual — sure, we use Photoshop instead of airbrushes, but good artwork still takes a good artist significant time. The same is true of the typography: When the market demands fancy layouts, someone has to pay a good compositor for his time.

Now, I’m an old fuddy-duddy. I don’t see why all the folderol is necessary (especially in physics) — but our salespeople assure us it is, and I have no reason to doubt them.

So I blame the customer — that is, the students. If their expectations of, say, a physics curriculum were not set by video games and music videos, prices would be much, much lower.

As it is, they seem to want the fanciest possible text (and supplementary materials) while paying no more than they do for the latest Danielle Steele. There’s simply no way to make that work — at least, no way that keeps me off welfare!

Anonymous