Publisher of Free Textbooks Says It Will Now Charge For Them, Instead 156
An anonymous reader writes "In a surprising blow to the movement to create free textbooks online, an upstart company called Flat World Knowledge is dumping its freemium model. The upstart publisher had made its textbooks free online and charged for print versions or related study guides, but company officials now say that isn't bringing in enough money to work long-term."
At some point the college kids need a paycheck... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK several people didn't read your post. (Score:2, Insightful)
Neither, apparently, did you.
"Free doesn't always work". You say this and this implies that sometimes it does work. Indeed we have several cases of it working very well indeed. That implies that "Free" IS a business case. Indeed, since 90% of all new ventures fail, that a majority of cases of a busniness case fail is no reason to claim it isn't a business model.
Therefore the opener "you need a real business model" is even under your auspices a load of bollocks: FREE IS A BUSINESS MODEL.
That you then have to
Re:OK several people didn't read your post. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Lack of revenue" is NEVER a business model.
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"Lack of revenue" is NEVER a business model.
Unless you're just aiming for eyeballs and a quick sellout, like YouTube or Instagram.
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Who said there was no revenue? Free != no revenue (Score:2)
Maybe you're one of the dimwits who modded the OP up.
Red Hat sell free software. As in you can get it FREE.
Radiohead sold an album FOR NOTHING. FREE.
This business is selling books for FREE.
But all three have revenue.
Red Hat: You can buy the software too. And pay for support.
Radiohead: You can buy the tracks too. And buy special premium content (CDs at the very least).
This business: You can buy the books too. And buy special premium content (Print books at the very least).
Re:Who said there was no revenue? Free != no reven (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat does not sell software, they sell support. Software needs support because it is complex and buggy. Books, not so much. Because Red Hat makes enough money selling support (and much of the software is created by others anyway), they can afford to give away unsupported software. That does not prove 'free' is a viable business model.
Radiohead made a ton of money selling albums the traditional way. The fact that they can afford to give one away for free is no more proof that 'free' is a viable business model than anyone else donating their time to something is proof that free is a viable business model.
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Red Hat has their software with zero motivation to make it better documented, more user friendly or more robust. Every time it fails for a commercial user it is a sales opportunity for them. This is a very perverse incentive for a software company.
Admittedly, Red Hat's software product is pretty complicated. But they could certainly do better in the user-friendly category.
Good software with reasonable documentation and few defects doesn't need a support contract. Having the support contracts fund the co
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Software needs support because it is complex and buggy. Books, not so much.
Really? Many textbooks are used by professors at universities and supported quite heavily. I think that the problem that these guys had was that they tried to follow the old model, where textbook writing subsidizes the university professor's salary. A more realistic model is for a group of professors to band together to write a textbook (or rewrite one that is in the public domain). That can work because professors are paid based on prestige (i.e. the university is effectively subsidizing the textbook r
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Really? Many textbooks are used by professors at universities and supported quite heavily.
True, but that support is free and aimed at the professor so that they will choose a particular book. This is part of the reason why textbook costs have managed to spiral out of control: those making the decision about which book to use do not pay the financial cost. It is only in recent years that the costs have got so large that us profs have finally started to notice and will quiz the publishers about the cost. However we often find that the cost differences are so small that it makes little difference
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Actually technically Red Hat _DOES_ sell software. They just provide the source for free, you have to have a support contract to get the pre-compiled binaries from them ( last I checked anyways - I'm a Debian user myself ). Other distros then take the source / patches and compile and distribute for free.
Again that is last I checked. They may have changed since then, and fedora does not count... that is just BETA testing for stuff they may put in RHES ETC.
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They sold them like Red Hat does their software (Score:1)
Radiohead asked people to donate what they thought the album was worth.
Free was entirely on the table.
Radiohead gave their album away. Asking you if you would pay is not making you pay.
Re:OK several people didn't read your post. (Score:4, Insightful)
One way or another, you have to have a way to bring in revenue. Even non-profits need, at least, some donations.
So, yes, "free" is possible. But "free without any other adequate source of revenue" is not. And it sounds like their plans to sell hardcopies for revenue simply wasn't producing adequate revenue.
Re:At some point the college kids need a paycheck. (Score:5, Insightful)
Free doesn't always work.
Non-free doesn't always work either. I have been involved in many businesses as founder, owner, consultant, adviser, etc. Some based on open source/content, some not. One company I was involved in gave the software away and sold t-shirts. That actually worked fairly well. The trick is to find a revenue model that works before you move out of Mom's basement. Remember that Mom isn't just giving you free rent, you are also getting free meals, electricity, laundry service, etc. Those all add up.
Free as in? (Score:2)
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It's "mom's house". If you have more than one mom, then it's "moms' house".
Your code has to compile, so should your English.
Surprising? I think not. (Score:2, Interesting)
We've seen this very scenario many times before, e.g. CDDB, change.org, etc.
Re:Surprising? I think not. (Score:5, Funny)
For over 15 years I've been paying $24/year for a free-for-life email address.
Re:Surprising? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
For over 15 years I've been paying $24/year for a free-for-life email address.
eh? who's that with? Seriously you could have your own domain plus email form less
Re:Surprising? I think not. (Score:5, Funny)
Chrisq, meet Whoosh.
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Whoosh, meet Chrisq. Chrisq, meet Whoosh.
How is this a whoosh? Care to explain this joke, or do you also pay $24/yr for free email?
USPS (Score:2)
Snail mail PO boxes run in that region. Snail mail is ostensibly free delivery.
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okay, it whoosed over me too. Anyone care to explain it?
Perhaps he is paying $24 / year to his domain registrar, DNS hoster, etc. (It would be a bit expensive, but it makes a good point)
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No, it was free for life for a year. Then they changed business model. I only use it as an address, it forwards email to me. Maybe it's expensive, I don't know, it morphed web mail service now but I don't use that part of it. But if I change it I have to change the email address that's trivial to remember and that everyone has known about for a very long time. So I'm paying for the convenience essentially.
(quick check showed that similar services at a similar price, but some free ones out there that se
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I signed up for an @writeme.com address, which promised to be free-for-life. There are many, many other domains in that stable which also started out 'free-for-life'. That lasted all of about two years, after which they switched to the paid model.
Needless to say I dumped them immediately. Running my own domain and my own email proved to be about the same price, with the added benefit of many other email addresses, a more personalized address ... and a web server.
Case closed.
Blow? I think not. (Score:3)
I've never heard of Flatworld before and I'm unlikely to in future I reckon. If Baen had done something like this it would have been a blow.
Re:Blow? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)
If Baen had done something like this it would have been a blow.
Yeah, a financial blow for Baen. I've spent fat stacks of cash on books that they'd lured me in with free versions. It helps for series sales to release the first novel, but it REALLY helps to release at least one novel per author, so you get a free preview of what they're like, and then the collecting drive kicks in and the amazon boxes start arriving ...
It seems there's a substantial psychological hill to climb with non-free publishers "I hate you Fing pirates downloading our books" "Well F you guys I'll buy something from Baen instead if it makes you feel any better" vs "Here's something free you might like. If you like it, there's lots more that's cheap, but not free." "Cool, (VLM whips out credit card)"
This is not theoretical, Baen is making more money off me than they "should" merely via their marketing gimmick.
Re:Surprising? I think not...Open Living. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes we have. Open (anything) source has a history of being difficult to make a living off of.
In the case of software, it has proven difficult, but not impossible. But this is no Red Hat Linux -- it's not someone taking the voluntary effort of millions and wrapping it up in a managed test-and-support environment. Red Hat profits because Red Hat take free and add value. Flat World have taken value (their books) and added free. That's completely back-to-front.
The problem here is not "open", it's "freemium". It's the freemium that never seems to work. The original philosophy of freemium was the idea that on the internet, unit cost was so low that a minority of "serious" customers would pay enough to keep the servers running. A lot of the "freemium" camp has found that freeloaders are actually more demanding in terms of support than they expected, and you can't ignore the guys on the free plan as long as you're hoping that they might one day become paying customers...
If they're still talking about partnering with EdX, though, they may still end up producing free material anyway, but as it will be customised to the EdX courses, it may well become something of an advertising asset, rather than a money sink.
Perhaps this is the way forward for the freemium business model -- limit the "free" version to a part of a wider "free" system. So the free version is "closed", but the paid version is "open". That means turning a few of our assumptions about the word "open" on their head...
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Perhaps this is the way forward for the freemium business model -- limit the "free" version to a part of a wider "free" system. So the free version is "closed", but the paid version is "open". That means turning a few of our assumptions about the word "open" on their head...
Or perhaps they should just charge what it's worth. An online textbook with a large readership should not cost much at all. When things are priced without an over-sized profit margin, people buy them. In fact, if the textbook is old, it is worthless and so they may as well give that away for free. On the other hand a textbook which is continually updated and remains current through expert review is worth a subscription. People who need that kind of currency of information will certainly pay for it.
Re:Surprising? I think not...Open Living. (Score:5, Insightful)
Textbooks that are old are worth lots. The newest ones are often worthless .... except that I am speaking from a homeschooler's or tutor's point of view. To a professor with 100 students, it's more important to have everyone use the same book, than for the book to be correct.
He can instruct the students on what to ignore, and why. He can check the answers to problems, and come up with an errata sheet. He can't even hope to read 20-odd different texts, though.
Re:Surprising? I think not...Open Living. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
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And every time I took a course where the book was written by the lecturer, it was one of the most popular books in the world on it's subject, such as "Computers in Communication" by Gordon Brebner (and actually, Brebner was on a sabbatical that year, so it wasn't even "the prof's" book, technically) and Using UML: Software Engineering with Objects and Components, which was one of only two books in the world on UML at the time.
If your prof's good enough to be a published author, for pity's sake don't moan ab
Re:Surprising? I think not...Open Living. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, if the textbook is old, it is worthless
Ahh that's the problem. I took a university class on pre-civil war american history. That could be updated every month as the historical academic journals publish new papers, but almost nothing would be changed each month and approx zero value would be added, although the price for all that churn would be extremely high. Or you could update the text every generation or so, maybe as what boils down to a PHD's dissertation project. Not sure if that would be an Ed PHD or a history PHD project or a collaboration more likely or .... That's probably good enough, and basically free.
On the other hand, I was forced to take some idiotic IT helpdesk support training type class on Excel '97, which was only one generation obsolete at that time. That textbook obviously has to be completely rewritten every time MS wants to re-cash-in on all the previous Excel sales.
Generally speaking if its a training textbook then an old one is worthless, and if its an education textbook then an old one is perfectly fine.
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Other areas of study are constantly rewriting entire portions of themselves - primarily in the science and tech fields.
No they are not, at least the majority of them at entry level. Not much has changed in newtonian mechanics for the 1st semester physics students in a long time. Ditto second semester basic electronics, maxwell's equations remain the same...
Very little has changed in sorting algorithms in Knuth, although trendy language flavor-of-the-month is changed on a scheduled regular basis. Ditto basic crypto math hasn't changed much in decades, although individual applications of the math occasionally appear.
There'
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It's the freemium that never seems to work
Tell that to DDO, MapleStory, and any of the zillions of other freemium games that make decent profits on microtransactions.
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Maplestory and a huge number of other games really are F2P, its just extra useless crap (like cosmetic stuff) or stuff you can get anyways over time(LoL, TF2, etc) that they charge for
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well, duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:well, duh (Score:4, Interesting)
And I look for my textbooks second hand ( I like the margin notes, anyway )
And the book stores really like you. Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday --
A new textbook went for $100
You could return that textbook for $30 (assuming that a new edition did not popup all of the sudden)
And then you could buy the same used textbook at a steeply discount price of $75-$80.
I suspect reselling used textbooks is far more lucrative than selling new ones. At least for the bookstores.
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Re:well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
And they work school policy to enforce they position too. A lot of schools will hold Grant and loan payment disbursements until after class starts forcing you to buy from the campus store on credit instead of having the options to get the books for 1/10th the price on the internet.
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Based on your numbers, they'll buy the used book for $30, and sell it for $75-$80 with no way to recoup cost if they aren't purchased (although they probably sell to a wholesaler or something) Profit = $45-$50
Looks like New books are more lucrative for the bookstores. Based on your numbers anyways/
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...then you probably shouldn't be commenting in a discussion with grown ups.
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Or perhaps he's been an actual professional author and knows the inner workings of the business. The 100% markup is standard for mainline book stores, as any author who reads his royalty statements rapidly learns! And the royalty is calculated from the publisher's net, not the book store's gross...
Books are a weird business (Score:5, Informative)
If you assume 100% markup, then the bookstore pays $50 for a new book, and sells it for $100. Profit = $50.
You are roughly correct for the gross margins but the net profit is nowhere near $50 in your example. (Rent, utilities, staff salaries, etc) Net profit will be quite a lot lower, probably in single digits to low teens usually if the company is profitable.
Probably with a way to return purchased books to the publisher.
Virtually all new books are sold on consignment. There are a handful of very large distributors in the book industry. They sell to bookstores including Barnes & Noble as well as your school book store. Some bigger sellers like Amazon can go direct but not many others can. New books are sold on consignment with 90 day terms meaning if they don't sell within 90 days they are returned to the publisher. Realistically 90 day terms really means 120 day terms because the distributors have 90 days from the book store and then 30 more days for themselves so the publisher gets paid at best 120 days after shipping a book that there is a good chance will be returned to them unsold. Publishing books is a terrible business to be in from a cash flow standpoint.
Based on your numbers, they'll buy the used book for $30, and sell it for $75-$80 with no way to recoup cost if they aren't purchased (although they probably sell to a wholesaler or something) Profit = $45-$50
There are secondary market options for used books that cannot be sold locally. Not hugely lucrative but they are significantly better than zero. The buyers of used books have some databases which tell them they should pay $30 for Book A and $5 for Book B and shouldn't buy Book C based on what they can sell it for elsewhere. They don't just buy books blindly for a flat fee. (or if they do they are stupid)
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If you assume 100% markup, then the bookstore pays $50 for a new book, and sells it for $100. Profit = $50.
You are roughly correct for the gross margins but the net profit is nowhere near $50 in your example. (Rent, utilities, staff salaries, etc) Net profit will be quite a lot lower, probably in single digits to low teens usually if the company is profitable.
Yes, correct -- it's the net profit, not the gross.
However, the exact same net/gross difference applies for the second-hand one. His point was that they do still make more on the new book than the second one.
Not that simple (Score:2)
However, the exact same net/gross difference applies for the second-hand one. His point was that they do still make more on the new book than the second one.
Not necessarily. First issue is that it depends very much on what price they can buy the used book. That amount varies rather significantly and you really can't just assume it is $30 a book. Given how easy it is to get steeply discounted used books through Amazon etc, odds are a bookstore can buy the book for significantly less than that. Second issue is how much of a discount they have to give to sell a used book instead of a new book. In his made up example the numbers work out in favor of new books
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Probably 20 bucks each, seeing as the movie never makes any money [slashdot.org]...
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The movie companies and the movie theatres are different entities. You pay the movie theatre a price for the ticket. The movie theatre has to pay a percentage of that price to the movie distributor - sometimes as high as 95% of the ticket price in the first few weeks of release for a blockbuster. You wonder why your soda costs so much at the movie theatre? It's because they don't make all that much from the actual price of a ticket unless they're showing a movie for the 7th or 8th week in a row, or they
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Don't get me wrong though as I'm not defending the theatres either - we all know that a box of soda mix or popcorn costs a few cents/pennies and yet they still charge an arm and a leg for that. In the theatre I used to work in, the salsa and cheese used for the nachos used to come in giant tins that used to cost about £0.05 each and the nachos were £0.02 a bag and you'd get many many servings out of that.
If they don't get much money from the tickets, then they need some means to get money to pay for the actual theatre it self, for the investment, maintenance, staff, equipment, and so on.
Newsflash for them (Score:2)
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They disagree. Which is better? There's only one way to find out...
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
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By the way (Score:3)
Re:By the way (Score:5, Informative)
Not really, I looked at the book list... unless you're a burning urn of churning funk for algebra... or just gotta have a book on social science... walk away from this pointless waste of electrons. I can't imagine with this book list they'll do any better with a for profit model.
Having an aneurysm - send help. (Score:5, Funny)
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It's not an unreasonable model - it's essentially the same as all those "freemium" games. The problem is when you don't get enough "mium" to pay for the "free" - and obviously, people were willing to settle for the electronic books without the physical.
Re:Having an aneurysm - send help. (Score:5, Interesting)
obviously, people were willing to settle for the electronic books without the physical.
May not even be a case of settling.
I wrote a novel aimed at a small student community, and released the ebook for free. i wanted it to be a gift, so i made the ebook free (creative commons) and also gave away a lot of physical copies to the people i thought would appreciate them most (within a certain community).
the really interesting thing is that i got feedback (remember, from people who i was offering the book to for free) that they were really happy to have the ebook version, but they didn't want the physical book version becase it was 'stuff' that they didn't need. they're students, they move around a lot, books aren't that light, plus they don't really have a place they keep 'things' any more, now they've moved out of home, and probably won't for a few years to come.
now sure, they might not have been interested at all, and been letting me down gently, but it made me realise that there'd need to be more to any future business model i might come up with than 'electronic is free, physical is not'. i know this may seem obvious in retrospect, but i think there's still an assumption held by many people that physical copy = upgrade of electronic copy, and this may not be true.
i'm sure many people on slashdot feel that way already, but mostly i would expect for functional/practical reasons. however, my experience suggests that the sentimental value of a physical book may no longer exceed the value of the ebook, either.
that could be the seeds of an interesting change in our perception of books altogether.
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Each time I've moved house I've taken dozens of boxes of books. In terms of efficiency they are the worst possession I own because they take up lots of space, lots of weight, need specialist storage in the house (bookshelves, etc.) and I rarely refer to them.
And that's *with* myself only keeping books that I have some sort of attachment to. In terms of books for university, I had one throughout my entire BSc. And that was because it was marked as compulsory AND exercises were set from it AND lectures wer
Re:Having an aneurysm - send help. (Score:5, Insightful)
But reading reference books on a kindle sucks, where one is often needing to quickly flip to different parts of the book that may not be connected by actual hyperlinks within it, or if you are searching for a particular full-page picture.
If actually reading anything but fiction on an electronic device was just as convenient as reading a physical book, where you can flip forward or backward an arbitrary number of pages entirely at your own discretion, it might replace them. Not before.
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E-book readers suck for non-narrative text in general. The standard e-book screen is about the size of a paperback book. Which to my mind makes it virtually impossible to have both a graph/table/chart/picture AND the text to explain it visible at the same time. Full size (10") tablets are probably big enough, but need better navigation as you suggest.
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Personally, I find that even 10" readers aren't quite large enough, actually (although admittedly, they come pretty close).
What would be much better, IMO, is a full A4-sized or letter-sized display for a reader (which would be a 14" diagonal). While probably unnecessarily large for strictly narrative reading, it'd be an ideal size for textbooks and other reference material.
All it would need after that are flicker-free fast page refresh times (where you cannot perceive the time it takes to switch page
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Your initial point seems to take exception to my views, and yet you conclude with a point that is the very reason why I would expect such a response time in the first place.
You seem to want to start an argument over something that it's quite apparent that we completely agree upon.
Oh right.... this is slashdot.
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I wrote a novel aimed at a small student community
there'd need to be more to any future business model i might come up with than 'electronic is free, physical is not'.
The market for small honorariums is pretty much dead, which is too bad. The $5000+expenses model is healthy, as is the "just show up for free" model. Someone could make a shitload of money on the internet as a facilitator of middle size honorariums as a business model. Its dead enough I've never even heard of an online facilitator for it... it might technically be alive but only in Paris and only with 10 speakers or something.
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Perhaps in the 21st century the model should be "physical is free, electronic is not."
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Perhaps you'd have more success if you learned to capitalize properly.
That is a fantastic double entendre, in context...
I can barely tell where one sentence ends and the next begins in your post, and I wouldn't even try to struggle with that in an entire novel.
...but given that you're in full on Grammar Crusader mode, I'm assuming it was accidental.
I don't like the insinuation that success can only be defined in pure numbers, or by sheer monitization. This is art. Sometimes it can do that, but it's not for that.
Also, whilst artists must know the rules, in order to be competent, nobody ever made art worth salt by merely following them.
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Close, in a F2P game, the devs can create whatever random content they want, like a hat or a shoe or people pay for power. For textbooks... that doesn't work as well lol
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Bleeding is only an issue with ink.
Most professional book publishers do not use ink, they use toner. Which does not bleed unless the printer was faulty.
The highest resolution electronic display devices commercially available right now are in the vicinity of about 350 dpi. At a reading distance of 12 to 18", admittedly, this is well within an order of magnitude of the actual optical capability of the human eye based on rod and cone density. Laser printers with better than 10 times that resolution ar
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Yes, that's almost as stupid as a free website that posts news, perhaps with some sort of comment and moderation system. Could never work.
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Since 90% of online based businesses are based on that exact same model.
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Radiohead are not a start up band. Radiohead, got to the top of their game with millions of sales. Plus millions and millions and millions and millions of marketing cash already invested. My band* tried the same business model, we've sold nothing!!! Also, you're not helping my aneurysm by comparing music and books for a course. Books that you are only buying cos the guy that teaches the class wrote it!.
*Not really in a band - the sales are the same.
Do no evil? (Score:2)
You know, if Google wants to "do some good", and maybe "buy some karma", they could extend some of those fat stacks - along with, maybe, you know, iTunesU Apple - and buy the best-of-breed textbooks in the classics and STEM - basic physics; calculus; english; trig; algebra; biology; chemistry, organic, and inorganic; and then make the source materials for the book available online for peer reviewed update and analysis.
The collective good done to humanity may be beyond measure.
Seriously. The amount of funds
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BitTorrent has already done this.
online for peer reviewed update and analysis.
Not seeing how the two connect in any way?
Now wikipedia is pretty much doing this today, the only real threat is the deletionist a-holes. I "really learned" (as opposed to memorized temporarily in school and promptly forgot) quaternions from the wikipedia article. I just checked and its not been deleted (yet) and its different than when I read it, but not any worse at least.
The deletionist a-holes might someday wipe the article from wikipedia just to feel joy in others pain, but mathworld probably would n
This just in (Score:2)
Not charging money doesn't bring in any money.
More at 11.
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Your right. The United Way begs for money from people and businesses year round to provide things to those who cannot afford to pay for it. Your options are "don't get paid" and "spend a lot of time and money begging for help". Also, the United Way is a non-profit charity, so one could think of it as them selling tax write-offs.
The perils of "freemium" (Score:2)
Put some omissions and errors in the freebies (Score:3)
Charge for the errata and addenda.
Hey, Star Fleet Battles (old school shout out) was printed with ring-binder holes for easy re-arrangement when they completed and corrected it, and they once published errata for an addenda.
Used a lot of textbooks, never heard of them. (Score:1)
Perhaps their popularity and content quality are the main reason of their crisis, not the business model?
I have a dream... (Score:2)
I fully understand the naïvety of my Martin Luther King -ish rant, but damn it, it doesn't hurt to dream.
I have this idea, that maybe, one day, when I start earning money and am done with my debts, I will start a charity (or a kick-starter, as it's called now).
You see, I have this idea, possibly naïve, that I will use the funds to outright buy quality textbook rights, or have them written under a patronage system by noted authors, and release those books to the public for free.
I fully realise the
Re:I have a dream... (Score:4, Informative)
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The single biggest hurdle is getting past the corruption in the education system. Richard P. Feynman wrote about his experience with being on the State of California's Curriculum Commission. http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm [textbookleague.org]
Flat World does college textbooks, not K-12 textbooks. At the college level, textbook selection is done by the individual professor or by several profs who all teach the same course at that school. There is no textbook bureaucracy as there is for K-12.
Boycott them (Score:2)
Screw the bastards into the ground.
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Free information, or bankruptcy. I dont belive in a middle ground.
If they want to sell dead tree versions, i can go along with that ( a VAR type of concept ) but the underlying data should be freely distributed.
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So why haven't you, an extremist, grown up? Clearly saying you need to grow up, which is just an opinion, will utterly defeat you. To add to the strength of my amazing arguments, let me say that you're not a "productive" member of society!
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If you were not a moron, you could see that information being free does not preclude you from making an income on the information.
For a simple example: Last i heard the US Constitution content was free, but there are plenty of people selling pretty printed copies, and making careers teaching about it.
What about people like Guido? I dont see him charging for python or its manuals but he is not exactly worried about paying his bills.
I could go on, but i doubt you are capable of undertsanding.
Wait so.... (Score:1)
meanwhile, plenty of books are still free (Score:2)
There are hundreds of free college textbooks out there on the web -- see my sig for a catalog.
There are basically two models that have been proved to work. (1) Do it yourself. (2) Set up nonprofit online collaborations so people can cooperate on producing high-quality free books.
#1 is actually the most successful model by far. Just do it. Bite the bullet. Write the damn book and put it online for free. Here are some very high quality examples of DIY textbook projects: Hefferon, Linear Algebra [smcvt.edu], Carroll, Lect [arxiv.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Ninite
I assume you remember the URL for google?