‘Price gouging from Covid’: student ebooks costing up to 500% more than in print from r/books

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/29/price-gouging-from-covid-student-ebooks-costing-up-to-500-more-than-in-print

Nearly 3,000 librarians, academics and students have now signed an open letter calling for a public investigation into the “unaffordable, unsustainable and inaccessible” academic ebook market.

Johanna Anderson, subject librarian at the University of Gloucestershire and one of the authors of the letter, says: “Publishers are manipulating the market and price gouging from Covid. We are trying to support students during an unprecedented public health crisis and they are making it so much harder. It is a scandal.”

Caroline Ball, subject librarian at the University of Derby, says one reason librarians are angry is that academic publishing is one of the most lucrative industries in the world, with unusually high profit margins, estimated at around 40%.

+++++++++++++++
more on ebook prices in the SCSU OER blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/oer/2021/01/17/ebook-prices/