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Investments 7th VS 8th

Joined
2/21/10
Messages
50
Points
18
Hello!

I need your opinions about the "Investments" books of Bodie-Kane-Marcus. At university I have studied "Investments 7th edition" and it was really a great book. And i wonder if something is improved significantly in 8th edition and if so what?. As I saw there are more talks about the derivatives in the new(8th) one. And also there are 28 chapters compared to 27 in 7th edition. All in all, Do u see any real improvement??? Is it worth ordering the new one? Im asking because most books which are published do not include any modification, rather just covers are changed and chapters replaced by one another. Any idea would be gladly acceptable. Thank you
 
How much people can make if they publish a well-known textbook like this one or Hull's? Is it lucrative? There is new edition every 2 years, especially those well-known undergrad books.
 
That's why I asked this question. I think these books are just the replications of the previous editions. Marketing strategy : to publish new books every year or two. How can an investments book be much different from the previous one. Its not a "Harry Potter" book to invent a new tale or some story and write. Its full of theories which doesn't explode in numbers every year. As I saw some pages the examples, tables, graphs are just exactly the same as the 7th edition. So i concluded that such theory based books dont differ much on each subsequent editions. There just may be a huge difference between the first and 10th, not 6th and 7th...
 
How much people can make if they publish a well-known textbook like this one or Hull's? Is it lucrative? There is new edition every 2 years, especially those well-known undergrad books.
Just like everything, there is financial incentive to get people to update, get the latest of everything even when the additional features do not justify the cost.
There are pharmaceutical salesmen swarming doctors office, there are books salesmen swarming university's department to introduce next versions of textbooks.
The publishers got majority of the money from book sales so there are always pressure on authors to update their books even when the new version has a few dozens typos and one additional chapters.

People can easily download the new chapter and errata from the author's website but how publishers will make money then.

Unless you sell millions of books, most authors are not making a living writing books.
 
Let's take Hull's as an example (I choose this just because it is so widely used. I like the book myself and nothing against the author). Assume each class can sell 10 of them and it is used not just in US, but around the world, so I think it wouldn't be too exaggerate to assume there are 1000 classes using the book in its life time (a particular edition). $100 each so it can be a million dollar business, ignoring the cost. The publisher obviously has incentive to "update" it, and for the author it could provide a handy stream of "bonus" every year.

Besides money, I guess publishing a book may also boost the author reputation as well, assuming the book is well written.
 
Actually there are several reasons to update the book every year even if it doesn't contain significant improvement:

1) To keep up with the sales rate in order to maintain reputation and popularity.
2) To increase the revenue by charging higher price even if the book is basically the same as an old one but advertise it as it is a "giant leap" from the previous one.
3) "To follow the life flow" - meaning have a guaranteed opportunity of publishing the book next year(by generating revenue this year)
4) Future strategy: If the author intends to publish another completely unrelated book some time in future, it has preserved reputation and is able to publish the book with no much efforts to make it popular,since it's been sold for years already.
 
Actually there are several reasons to update the book every year even if it doesn't contain significant improvement:

All those reasons seem to be overlapping. You are right those books do not differ at all. But with no doubt Body - Kane - Marcus Investments books are really great ones.
 
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