Sometimes I get a Pearson international edition. Sometimes I don't. One non-Pearson edition conveniently left out the front matter, including the copyright info: I suspect it's pirated.
The books can certainly be produced for less. On the other hand, a lot of the international editions don't yield much revenue, even though they're a lot cheaper.
That includes revenue for things like paying the staff that manages production or the time spent in writing and editing the actual books. Yeah, some executives make millions. But most of the salaries and wages are still paid to non-executive workers in the West.
So we get revenue for things like paying over-priced Westerners to run the printing presses and distribute. Much cheaper to outsource production to someplace with far lower standards of living. Heck, we could outsource all sorts of things to overseas, I'm sure. And that's the problem: Each of us approves of decisions to outsource that saves us money, but disapproves of it when it benefits others.
The overall pricing is a mix. Mostly it's "from each according to his ability."
And let's not even consider stock prices. I mean, we look at private investors and comment on them. Some of the largest investors, though, are institutional: State pension funds, union pension funds.
= new reply since forum marked as read