Does selling used textbooks hurt authors and publishers?
” you should immediately become suspicious. The question is seemingly too simple and the answer too obvious. Almost all textbooks are sold to students taking courses that require the book. Therefore, the number of textbooks sold in a semester can be considered fixed. For every used textbook sold, then, one less new textbook is sold. Since publishers and authors only make money from the selling of new books, selling used textbooks definitely hurts their revenue. To argue otherwise would be to willfully deny these simple facts.
