What's Next, Ad-Supported Text Books? Oh Wait...
from the free-free-free dept
A company called Free Load Press is looking to use the ad-supported model to distribute college textbooks. After filling out a survey, students can download free PDF textbooks with ads for companies like Fedex Kinko's. Obviously, the company faces an enormous uphill battle trying to convince professors to assign their textbooks, as opposed to those sold by established publishing houses. And a lot of people will find ad-supported books unseemly. But the story highlights how messed up the current textbook market is. Although it's students who foot the bill for new books, it's professors who make the decision about what book to use. Of course, the professor doesn't have any incentive to shop around for price, and so prices spiral higher. Furthermore, the textbook oligopoly (Thomson, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill) feels it has to charge more to make up for the growing secondary market for used text. But endless price increases are the very reason for the secondary market and new experiments such as this one. This is not to mention the fact that the textbook industry, like the music industry, wants to sell the same product over and over again. That's why they keep putting out new versions of textbooks even though little has been added to them. As Scott Mcnealy put it in a recent interview, there's no reason to keep spending money on new textbooks as "Math hasn't changed since Isaac Newton." So whether Free Load Press works out is not the point; this is clearly a market anxious for a way around the textbook cartel and its attendant pricing.
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It's about time...
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Re: It's about time...
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Textbook Versions
As the sumarry eludes to, professors don't care - they go with the latest revision. I wouldn't be surprised if professors were given some form of incentive to use the annual or bi-annual revisions.
Returning text books to the college bookstore was a rip as well - about as bad as reselling a used video game to a used-game store. And, if the book you bought was replaced with a new revision - too bad, there's no return at all, but they'll throw it away for you.
As long as ad-supported textbooks aren't obtrusive (distracting from the material a student is trying to learn, or requires views before reading each page of legit material), I'd try it out were I still in school.
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Re: Textbook Versions
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No incentive?
What they need to do is ban professors from assigning the text books they wrote, because of course they will choose their own - and every new edition that comes out, as well!
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Book prices are insane
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International
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Re: International books
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Re: Re: International books
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Re: International
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I'd buy both
I also love the portability and seachability of PDF documents, so I would purchase both. I don't think I could do without a hard copy.. but a soft copy would most definitely be valuable to me.
-Qyiet
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Re: I'd buy both
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Filtering
God knows the comp science students could make one~
The moment you make something digital it can be cut, pasted, changed and revised automatically
And students are the group who would do this the most.
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Re: Filtering
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The only thing they change is the answers
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Professors writing books:
Luckily, he was sensitive to the text book price jacking so his cost only $10 and was stapled together. Honestly, it was the best textbook I ever used.
I think that if a professer writes a book and they make it mandatory for their students, they should offer a low budget version of the book like the one I mentioned above. They can sell the hardbound version elsewhere, and, if its as good as they say it is, people will pay the money for it.
So, if a professor is going to write a book, their incentive should be that they want a tailored book for their class, not a bigger house.
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Students with scholarships at my school would go to the campus bookstore, buy a pencil, get the remainder of their "book money" back in cash, and then hit the used bookstores for all the classics they needed to read.
Campus bookstores would also do things like punch out the price printed on the english books, so you couldn't see how badly you were being fleeced.
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Just another scam
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Ad Supported Text Books
Go for it.
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Math hasn't changed since Newton???
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i miss grade school
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The Decisions are not always in our hands...
Many departments have standardized their book choices, and/or settled in with a primary publisher - if I want to use a different book, it is a long uphill battle. But part of that makes sense - because of distance education, schools want to make sure that there is a level of standardization in the classes being offered globally - as part of quality control. The schools even standardize the syllabus for the classes.
The other issue is the textbook companies - they always try to put out new editions. It the author doesnt want to update the book, they will bring in a second author. And once a new edition is available, the old editions are no longer available. I let my students know that they can use any edition they want, however, if I tell them to work on Problem 4 on page 158, it is up to them to check and make sure it is the same problem in the old edition as it is in the new edition.
And as far as stuff not changing - it always changes. I was teaching a class and the book we were using was 5 years old, and the students were complaining that we were using an old book! I explained to them that the basics were still the same, but they wanted a new book.
During my classes, we have a trivia challenge, just for fun, and at the end of the term, I give away some of my old textbooks - and some students have complained because the books were "old", even tho they were just one edition behind.
And I have put some of my books on reserve at the library, but students don't go to the library as much as they used it - and it is not a viable option for commuting or distance students.
But I do agree that the textbook companies are getting away with murder, and grossly overcharge for the textbooks, and my generating new editions (needed or not), they are destroying the used book market.
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My professors try to save me money
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first, a family friend works for a professor and writes "his" textbooks. she gets a small cut of the publishing, however the prof gets a HUGE cut (upwards of 30% or more)
math has changed, as stated above, but basic calculus doesn't change much from one year to another.
another friend of mine bought a "used" novel for an english class. she paid like 18 bucks for the book (used) however it was clearly marked 12.95 in the new price in the upper corner.
and yes, my department, electrical engineering, had a standard set of books for the "core" classes. my control systems prof said the book sucked so much, but he couldn't change it because the department wouldn't consider revising their booklist. shame on them.
it's funny how my book store offered "50%" on returned books, however it was 50% of what they would sell used. i just chuck my book on amazon, undercut the cheapest by like 5 bucks, and i'm golden. I was able to sell books at the bookstore too. just go in at the beginning of the semester, and walk around where your books are. see someone pick it up/have in their basket or arms, and say you have the same book on you for 20 bucks less than what they are paying.
also other professors would realize when a new edition came out and make dual homework assignments. i.e. those with rev. 4 do numbers 1-5,6,8,14,23 while those with rev. 5 do 1-3, 5-8, 11, 17 and 20. same number of problems, exactly the same problems, just different orders. all we did was label them 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8....and we were fine.
if the publshers were smart, they'd change all the questions, that way, the homework would always be different.
i hated the whole textbook thing, but luckly i had a private scholarship that "paid" for books. 500 a semester, and i could usally spend only 300 at most for books. 200 bucks is a nice chunk of change to a college student
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My Professor sunk to new low
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Re: My Professor sunk to new low
however another prof found a trick. he just posted the pdfs of the articles and book pages he needed. because they were on a restricted class website, he was able to get away with that. we had to either download them and bring them to class with a laptop, or just print them out ourselves (expensive if you don't have free printing from your university)
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Student constructed text-books?
The experiment is in its early days, and it's subject to the vagaries of student interaction, but it's already looking promising. Students are gathering information from around the web and creating information that is relevant to both their studies and their interests. (I even link to blog posts on TechDirt.)
Mind you, I'm an early career academic, so have not written any text-books yet, but if I do, they will probably harness many of the interactive aspects of the web and hopefully be well within the budget of my students.
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generation and substation
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