Colleges May Start Forcing Switch To eTextbooks 419
An anonymous reader writes "Here's the new approach under consideration by college leaders and textbook manufacturers: 'Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).' That may be 'the best way to control skyrocketing costs and may actually save the textbook industry from digital piracy,' proponents claim."
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Informative)
They can borrow them at the library (frequently on reserve) and save money
In ye olden days, when we could get 5 cent per page photocopies, the university bookstore never seemed to sell any any books that cost much more than 5 cents per page, if you know what I mean.
The response of the professors/TAs/instructors was highly variable.
The publishing industry solution was wait for photocopy prices to raise to like ten cents or whatever it is now, and also bulk the heck out of the books like a walmart customer on HFCS. So, a 600 page calculus tome is going to cost me $60 to photocopy or $80 new... may as well buy it.
My experience with e-textbooks (Score:5, Informative)
I attend an online university for my masters program. As part of this program, because it is new, they offered a pilot whereby students enrolled from the outset would receive free e-books. Being that I am poor (single income, one child and a SAHM) I welcomed this offer.
The software used is miserable to operate (slow, buggy, required me to sit on with their tech support for over an hour to resolve an upgrade issue). It takes upwards of 15 minute to print a single chapter because it adds text with your name and e-mail address assigned to the account (for DRM ) to every page.
While I am grateful for the free books, if I had the choice between the two I'd definitely go hardcover. The student should be able to make the choice between the two mediums, not the school regardless of whatever their motivation is.
Re:Just a way to kill the used book market... (Score:3, Informative)
The irony of this proposal is that many professors, realizing that book prices are just obscene in the academic market, are preparing their own materials and giving them to the students for the cost of printing them.
Up here in Canada, there are strict regulations on such photocopying. Professors order a course pack from a copy shop made up of hand-picked chapters from various books, which the students can then pick up, but because of the per-page photocopying license fees [accesscopyright.ca], these often end up costing the student about as much as the original textbook.
- RG>
Right to Read (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
That crazy kooky Stallman. What nonsense fearmongering will he rant about next?
...and for those of us who don't buy books? (Score:4, Informative)
And before replies start pouring in about how I'm cheating myself and my grades will suffer...you're wrong. I'm consistently making 'A's in my classes, book or no book.
Free the textbooks (Score:2, Informative)
Or of course, they could just use free (as in freedom and price) CC licensed textbooks. I wrote two such undergraduate textbooks:
http://www.jirka.org/ra/ [jirka.org]
http://www.jirka.org/diffyqs/ [jirka.org]
That should save some money. Both are classes where a traditional textbook is $100 or so
At OSU (Score:4, Informative)
Professors here at Ohio State have a variety of ways to deal with secondhand book sales. Some textbooks here are only available in looseleaf form so they cannot be sold back. Many are "OSU Edition" copies, to ensure they cannot be sold online; to book stores in other regions; or at all after 1--2 years once the publisher comes out with the next edition. Barns & Noble, the "official" OSU bookstore [bncollege.com] has a program called "textbook rental" to curb resale of used textbooks. Then, one of the worst models is in the Physics department [ohio-state.edu]; they have an agreement with the publishers and a company called WebAssign [webassign.net], where although you can buy a used copy of a textbook, only the new ones have a "product key" which you need to do your (required) online homework.
Under none of these circumstances do professors pay anything for students, and (for obvious) reasons professors get the materials for free and most don't have a clue what the books cost until a student tells them (which they ignore). I can't say I'm surprised by any of this. Publishers make enormous profits by revising textbooks and requiring newer versions, and because students (who have to buy the books) don't have a choice. All the while, these new techniques are being upheld as "cost saving" and "convenient" for students. Consumer choice and the free market at work I guess.
To the hell with online textbooks!
Buying books I can understand, but... (Score:3, Informative)
...requiring students to "buy" online books? What the crap? You don't buy the book, you license it (which this video explains [youtube.com] in a hilarious way). Students would have to use "approved" book readers to read these books. Students couldn't lend their books to other students. Students couldn't save money by buying used books. Students can't read these books without looking at a screen, and much less without a working computer (power outage, anyone?). This is by no means a good idea; maybe it would be for the book authors/publishers, but nobody else.
Re:Why are costs skyrocketing? (Score:1, Informative)
> The cost of printing has been going up...
Bullshit. My nonprofit publishes books in small runs (like many niche academic works). In 2000, it cost roughly 10,000 to get paper bound into books by an offset press, because the minimum run was 1000 books. This was the absolute smallest you could do. Most of that was waste; we had to pay to store the extras. Price $10 a unit.
In 2010, the cost for a run of similar spec books is roughly $7 a unit via Lulu.com, one of several print on demand options. Our smalled possible run is... one book. Our storage costs are zero. Lulu even handles fulfillment, so we've closed our ecommerce site and don't handle shipping. Other services compete with Lulu. Print on demand book binders are shrinking rapidly, so expect healthy competition to increase.
Similar innovations in the editing of books have driven down costs there: our editors work from home.
Academic books are so expensive because:
a) printing niche books with tiny runs drives up cost per unit... (whoops that's largely untrue anymore).
b) industry is bloated and screwing everyone.
Free/open textbooks (Score:4, Informative)
Open textbooks for freshmen level classes should be possible
There are free/open textbooks in mathematics, at least at the fresher level. Here are a few:
http://www.lightandmatter.com/calc/calc.pdf [lightandmatter.com] some physics books are at the same site
ftp://joshua.smcvt.edu/pub/hefferon/book/book.pdf [smcvt.edu]
http://www.math.uiowa.edu/~stroyan/InfsmlCalculus/FoundInfsmlCalc.pdf [uiowa.edu]
http://www.mecmath.net/calc3book.pdf [mecmath.net]
http://www.opensourcemath.org/books/mauch-applied_math/applied_math.pdf [opensourcemath.org]
LaTeX source is available for some of them. These books mostly bridge from high school calculus to first year college vector calculus (the last one goes a bit further), but may not be aligned with a particular professor's path through the topics. There are various others at high school level, and quite a few in specialized/advanced areas, but not so many at the undergrad level. It's worth browsing through the categories at http://planetmath.org/?op=mscbrowse&from=books [planetmath.org] for slightly more advanced topics.
See 17 USC 121 (Score:5, Informative)
Accessibility for us disabled folks will be an artificial extra cost, to satisfy the imaginary property brigade who think text-to-speech isn't a right.
It is a right. Even U.S. imaginary property law [copyright.gov] appears to preserve this right.
MARKETING ... do your part (Score:2, Informative)
Well .. you should do your part marketing free alternatives. Tell your professors about free (or reasonably priced) textbooks. It might be that they do not know about them! Good places to start:
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jmg336/html/mathematics.html [nyu.edu]
http://www.ebyte.it/library/refs/Refs_Math_Books.html [ebyte.it]
http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html [gatech.edu]
I'll also again plug my own two free textbooks :) http://www.jirka.org/ra/ [jirka.org] and http://www.jirka.org/diffyqs/ [jirka.org]
Jiri
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Informative)
Only recently has this monopoly been broken with the advent of online textbook purchasing, and prices are a bit more reasonable on the new prices. They still rape you on the used purchase/sell-back end but that can be circumvented if you keep an ear out and find people who just had the class and you're about to take it. Cut out the middle-man and both sides are happy. Higher learning has become such a racket driven by lust for profit.
Recently taking more classes we used e-book versions which I say was even more of a rip-off. The e-book cost about 40-60% of the dead-tree version, and they revoke access after about six months to a year, and of course you can't sell it back at all. Maybe I am weird but I prefer to keep my textbooks as reference and refreshers.
BookMaid (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bookmaid.com/ [bookmaid.com] is set up to do exactly that for RIT students. Thing is, it often doesn't have anyone who's listed the book you need. Good idea though.