"This International Student Edition is for use outside the U.S."

The primary textbook I adopted for my university general zoology class is a McGraw-Hill Higher Ed text. The "U.S. edition" is hardbound and costs about $230.00, while the "international edition," which bears the warning in the subject line on its front cover, is softcover perfect bound but is otherwise identical to the U.S. edition. Except that I bought mine for $45 (brand new, shrink wrapped) rather than $230. The publisher "forbids" sale of the international edition in the U.S., but it's available online from some booksellers, some of which might actually be outside the U.S.

The hard cover text is clearly better value for the money-- I mean, students who buy that book can likely use it as a reference for many years, while the perfect bound edition will undoubtedly fall apart with age and use. I still have most of my own college texts thirty + years later, so I appreciate long term value in books. There is great intrinsic value in a well constructed book that will last for decades of reference use.

But still, it's equally clear that U.S. students are being charged as much as the market will bear without regard to the actual cost of producing the text they're being sold, and that publishers who follow the practice of producing special "U.S. editions" are taking as much profit from U.S. students as they possibly can, similar to the way big pharma prices drugs differently for the U.S. market than for most other countries. If they can afford to sell the text everywhere else for $45, and that still leaves book sellers some room for markup, then clearly they could afford to sell the same text for approximately the same price in the U.S., perhaps a bit more for the hardbound edition for those who take the long view of text ownership.

Anyway, this chaps my hide. /rant