Textbook Prices Force Taiwanese to Photocopy

Evidently students in the United States aren\’t the only ones forced to buy ridiculously priced texts. An article in the Taipei Times written by the Director of the Shih Hsin University Library, Lai Ting-ming laments the situation for students in Taiwan, and says US publishers are culpable.

`Foreign publishers should ask themselves whether it is reasonable to sell books to students in developing nations at prices set according to their own living standards.\’

Photocopy shops near the universities are being investigated, and Ting-ming writes that piracy won\’t stop unless the problem of exhorbitantly priced books is eliminated. Few people photocopy books from China becasue they are affordable, the article states. Here is the very interesting full editorial.