Introduction Microeconomics focuses on buyers and sellers and how their choices are influenced by different economic forces. Microeconomics is also the study of supply and demand for certain products in markets and what affects decisions throughout the market. The textbook industry is changing very quickly, more specifically college textbooks. Digital textbooks are becoming more and more popular while the old-fashioned, traditional textbooks are becoming a thing of the past. This is greatly affecting the market for textbooks which will be explained throughout this research paper. The revenue for college textbooks is unbelievably high. One of the “Big 3” publishers in the United States that was responsible for publishing nearly a third of all college textbooks and raked in nearly $2 billion in revenue in 2011 (Crockett, 2013). The supply and demand for textbooks is still very strong and high because students need the textbooks in order to be successful. The transition from traditional textbooks to digital textbooks is swiftly occurring in today’s world. The prices of college textbooks are ridiculous and is often viewed as a “rip-off” to many college students and parents. The average cost an undergraduate student at a four year public university spends on books is $1,200 (“Quick Guide: College Costs”, 2015). The …show more content…
Some professors require textbooks, while others do not. Regardless, professors use some sort of material to cover their course with that a student must obtain to be successful in the course. It is said that textbooks have been present ever since there has been a form of writing or schooling (Goslin, 2015). With that being said, there really is no exact date for when the first textbook was created. The earliest known proof of textbooks were written in Latin and made in a period in the 16th Century (Goslin,