Sunday, October 09, 2016

Pricing for "Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience" (5th Ed.)

This is a brief discussion about things I've found about the price for "Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience: Practice and Ethics" (Fifth Edition) by Gordon C. Andrews -- mainly to follow up on the other post about "Law for Professional Engineers" (Fourth Ed.) by D. Marston. Again, it may be a textbook used in courses and/or for exam preparation.

What I've found about the book's price
When I checked around mid-October 2016, a product page for "Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience: Practice and Ethics" (5th edition) on Amazon.ca noted a publishing date of 2013 and a selling price of about CA$ 132 -- the "List Price" was CA$ 162.95. Only one copy was listed under the "Used" section and it was higher in price than Amazon.

Going over to the Indigo.ca website, a product page for the same book showed a selling price of about CA$ 133 and a "List Price" of CA$ 162.95. This was essentially the same as Amazon.ca.

I have seen copies of this book show up on Kijiji for the Toronto area before in 2016, but they were sold as a pair with a copy of "Law for Professional Engineers" (4th edition). If I remember right, the asking price was about CA$ 200 and up.

The best price I found was probably at a website linked to from the publisher's website. It was something called "NelsonBrain" and my impression of it was that it was an online store. I found a product page there for a "Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience: Practice and Ethics, 5th Edition." The "Paperback" price listed was CA$ 162.95, but there was also an "eBook" option that had a price of CA$ 81.95 and up depending on length of access. This looked more like an electronic rental service than an actual digital book purchase. A brief look suggested that the rental periods were in increments of about six month periods. There was also an option to buy an "eChapter" that I didn't look at in detail. Just a reminder: I have never used this NelsonBrain service before and have no idea if and how it works.

Cheapest Option: Library?
Again, the Toronto Public Library was the cheapest option I found in the Toronto area. In mid-October 2016 when I checked, a webpage for "Canadian professional engineering and geoscience : practice and ethics" (Fifth edition) noted that there were 14 copies and 20 holds. A page for a fourth edition showed that there were 5 copies and 2 holds. Not sure how many were reference copies for either edition. A third edition also appeared to be available.

Older Editions?
Similar to "Law for Professional Engineers," I found older editions for cheaper. For "Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience: Practice and Ethics," a fifth edition apparently had a publishing year of 2013 while a fourth edition's was 2008 and a third edition's was 2004 -- according to Amazon.ca product pages. How much changed between the editions? I have no idea but it probably isn't nothing.

A product page on Amazon.ca for a fourth edition of the geoscience book showed copies available for about CA$ 60 after shipping under the "Used" section from third-party sellers -- this was around mid-October 2016. I found copies of a third edition on another webpage for about CA$ 20 after shipping around the same time.

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