The look of $100 textbooks selling legally for $39

Comments:

• pond says:

  May 30, 2006 at 8:13 am

  But Why –

  –should textbooks cost $100 to begin with?

  And Why –

  –should etextbooks cost $39?

  - because they can.

  - those who determine what books must be bought are not those who must buy the books.

  - so the ‘invisible hand’ of supply and demand does not work.

  Opentextbooks are the way to to, especially with basic course texts of this sort.

  And we shouldn’t forget that, once upon a time, teachers actually taught their subjects, instead of pontificating at a lectern and telling students, in essence, to teach themselves (by reading the textbooks).
• David Rothman says:

  May 30, 2006 at 9:20 am

  Hi, Pond. I couldn’t agree with you more that textbooks and books in general cost too much. I’ve offered some rather specific suggestions on ways to help reduce the costs of books.

  In fact, I’d love it if $39 textbooks could become $5 textbooks or even 50-cent or free textbooks. But I don’t control the industry or its biz models or the governments that could help out. For years I’ve been fighting for free, well-stocked national digital libraries.

  Within the opentextbook area, you’ll be interested to know that dotReader, the first implementation of the OpenReader standard, will eventually be doing wikis. So, yes, dotReader can allow for that model as well. If students and teacher want to join together in creating their own content, the means will be available that way.

  Meanwhile, OSoft is planning for dotReader to let blogs and forums be embedded in e-textbooks and other e-books. So existing content can be a starting point toward intensive interaction between students and teachers.

  Thanks,
  David
• Quinn Anya Carey says:

  May 30, 2006 at 1:57 pm

  Pond,

  I’m teaching first-year Russian next year. To my knowledge, there are no OpenTextbooks that cover basic Russian grammar, not to mention laid out in a way that makes it as easy as possible for students to get a handle on some of the more complicated grammatical features. While I’m generally not a fan of bundled books, there’s something to be said for giving students relevant audio recordings to help them with listening and pronunciation. Furthermore, textbooks provide pre-made exercises for students to do that tie in directly with the vocabulary and grammar from the current chapter.

  I’m also taking classes, doing research, and working 3-4 jobs, and I don’t have time to come up with all the materials my students will need, by myself.

  If I could find a quality OpenTextbook, or one that could meet my needs with little additional work, I’d use it. I don’t get the feeling that teachers are in cahoots with the publishing industry to screw students over. I think if the materials were there for free, at the level of quality needed, teachers would switch. And I think it’s a little unfair to make such a broad generalization of modern university teaching; not to say that it doesn’t happen, but it represents a vast minority of the classroom experiences I’ve had.
• pond says:

  May 31, 2006 at 9:08 am

  etextbooks as wikis?

  David, that’s a great idea! I’ve read where active learning teaches better than passive learning. So the notion that a class could assemble its own textbook as a wiki could be a great learning experience.

  For example, the class could be divided into groups, with each group responsible for a certain area of research. The groups could be as small as individuals, with shadowing students responsible for reading their partner’s contributions and critiquing or expanding on them. TidlyWiki could be used as an authoring media, maybe.

  Quinn Anya, I hope I didn’t offend you or other teachers who work very hard indeed, and I didn’t mean to denigrate the work that teachers do. It does seem that Introductory Courses should cover ground that does not change greatly from one year to another; Russian slang will change, but how much slang does Basic Russian cover?

  In some areas, it certainly does seem that, if the professors aren’t ‘in cahoots’ with those publishers for whom they themselves provide, or hope to provide, textbooks, at least many professors are indifferent to the issue of cost. I have known professors who made a point of assigning and ordering the cheapest editions of classic, public-domain literature they could find. Also, I suspect that professors have long ago thrown up their hands at the hope of textbook publishers selling textbooks at reasonable prices – or the professors have simply become inured to the outrageous prices they see, term after term after term.

  All the more reason for etextbooks, and open textbooks, as I see it.
• Quinn Anya Carey says:

  May 31, 2006 at 12:17 pm

  Pond,

  No offense taken, really. I know university teachers have a bad reputation, and since teaching and pedagogy aren’t considered valuable from a tenure point of view, it’s understandable (though unfortunate) that some people don’t bother. But there’s at least some of us who still care.

  I’m definitely in favor of e-textbooks, particularly with the annotation and updating capabilities of dotReader. I’m hoping in the next couple years to get the textbook we’re planning on using into the dotReader; I like the idea of being able to leave group notes for the TAs pointing out areas where students are having trouble, so they can review it. Also, the program supervisor could better see what the teachers are up to.

  Slang actually changes slower than you’d think, and in first year, there’s so much grammar that there’s not much room for the finer points of lexicon. But I can definitely see the benefit in an upper-level class, or even in a lower level class, switching out news articles for more current ones.

  The problems, I think, are less on the professors’ end and more on the publishers’, though you’re right that professors do seem to have basically given up and just accepted the state of things. Any high-level scholarly book (however few pages) is $30+, but if you want to read the latest research put out by other scholars you don’t know personally, that’s what you’ve got to do. Scholars themselves are bound by copyright in that they can’t release their work publically on-line because of their contract with the publisher, but in this “publish [p-books] or perish” environment, they can’t afford to not sign the contract.

  With textbooks I think it’s largely a question of what’s available. If there was something quality, in print, for less, I don’t think they’d stick with a more expensive book just because. (Exceptions being, perhaps, older professors who are completely set in their ways.) But in general, professors are stuck with what the publishers provide. My “Reading German” teacher was very apologetic that we had to buy the new edition of the textbook, but that’s all that’s in print and there’s no used copies because it was just released this year. The new edition was, in fact, smaller than the old one that came out just a few years ago, and contained no significant changes besides switching out a couple of the readings. I’m guessing the update was just a way for the publisher to avoid losing money to the used book industry, at least for a couple years. But until someone’s willing to put in the time and effort to create open textbooks and/or launch a major campaign against the publishing industry’s prices, I don’t see a whole lot of options.
• bingle says:

  May 31, 2006 at 5:28 pm

  The problem with attaching advertising to anything is that it changes the balance of power and the tacit arrangement between the buyer and the seller.

  Textbooks without ads are about the publisher selling content to the reader. Ad-supported media is about something different: the publisher sells the readers to the advertisers. The only reason the quality of content matters is to attract more readers; it’s no longer a direct concern of the publisher. It’s easy to imagine (and see from the examples of other media) how the needs or desires of the advertisers will be put before the needs of the readers.

  Advertising in textbooks is probably inevitable; ads are invading every possible space these days. But I question whether we should rush to embrace them wholeheartedly – is the lower cost of a textbook really worth losing the integrity of the content?
• David Rothman says:

  May 31, 2006 at 5:52 pm

  Perhaps the answer depends on how rich or poor you or your parents are. Your concern is valid, bingle, but so are concerns over the affordability of textbooks. It’s not an easy issue. My own solution would be a well stocked national digital library system offering plenty else besides textbooks, but then you run into the risk of government interference. In the end, I suspect, the best solution is a bunch of different business models, so that the books can be spread around without either Big Bro or Mad Av being able to censor us. Thanks. David
• David Rothman says:

  May 31, 2006 at 5:59 pm

  Pond: I really do believe that all this talk about different learning styles is right on target. So, yes, some students might thrive on the interaction that a wiki involves–just so they also knew the basics. I myself love interactivity, especially the blogging kind, as a way to learn from others in the natural course of things. The other cool thing about wikis is that in practical ways, reflecting the merits of the contributors, wikis offer a lesson in learning to work with others, an essential in most but not all work situations. Tnx. David