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Textbooks With EULAs
overshoot writes "We all knew it was coming, didn't we? Now Princeton University and nine others are introducing DRM'd textbooks. For a 33% discount, students get a 5-month node-locked e-book instead of all that glossy paper. Maybe Congress should just get it over with and change the law to allow EULAs on printed works?"
And just what happens when you need to revise for exams? This sounds like a very badly thought out idea that someone didn't want to work.
It's a new option that they're offering. If you think hardcopies offer a better value, keep using them. A 1/3 discount may not be enough to make this a roaring success, but they probably have some upfront costs to defray. If the market balks at their price, I'm sure they can get it down to 1/2 before too long.
I kept many of my college texts. In fact, right now, I'm looking at an almost 20 year old copy of my Gwartney and Stroup Econ book as I prepare to teach econ this semester in high school. It's not that I forgot (my BA is econ), just looking for the much better explanations and examples than the text we use.
this is also horrible for another reason. how can students refer back to previous classes? all these people that think technology can cure all. sad really. nothing beats books. and by the way, my masters is in Ed. Tech.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Don't forget that this requires an expensive electronic device to read! Add the cost of a laptop if you need to use it anywhere (even over several years of books) and it is a worse deal.
I don't like the idea that a crippled version is sold for a marginal savings when it shifts so many costs to the user. Saving to pdf or whatever is a lot cheaper than printing, and I want to see a much better share of that savings.
Sorry but textbooks are a screwjob from start to finish. I mean think about it. They cost five times what normal books cost, They have a built in captive market of well defined size thats know before the first one is printed, and near zero advertising costs. (very limited need to strip unsold copies) With all that going for them a textbook should cost about what the average paperback does.
Now the other thing to ask yourself is why is the difference between successive editions usally just the questions ??
Welcome to getting screwed its not a surprise that the text book industry likes the idea of DRM
BTW they start the article by mentioning a book which I believe is no longer covered under copyright law (copyright expired a long long time ago): Dante's Inferno.
b _rdr_next3_fm1/102-2757971-7030535?_encoding=UTF8& p=S002&ns=1#reader-page
Would it not even be illegal to put a work from which the copyright has expired under a EULA, with that pretending that there even is a copyright?
Also look at amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0679433139/ref=si
It says: Copyrighted material. I think that is totally incorrect, can somebody confirm this please?
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
One way publishers get around that is by introducing new editions of text books every year, which differ only by incorporating the errata fixes, and different homework problems. (so everyone needs to buy a new $150 book) You can get a better price selling your books to off campus book coops, and you can get a better price buying your books there. If students could manage to organize enough (this isn't the '60s) they could really save a bundle if everyone bought used books, and they all pooled some cash to buy one new edition, then distributing the homework problems as necessary.
More music, fewer hits
Like a lot of other people have noted, 5 months is no way near enough to have a reference textbook available to you.
I could understand it if there was a minimal fee (a few pennies), and it was treated as a library withdrawal. I don't mind paying a little to borrow a book.
However, as most of my old coursebooks cost about £40 or so, I really draw the line at spending about £25+ to borrow a reference book.
Whoever thought out the timespan is a tad on the nuts side, even if it is for University use.
You tend to use a particular book for a couple of months, then it stays on the shelf until it's time to revise.
Perhaps it'll also be referenced in the next year from time to time. Also for a few weeks/couple of months, then sit on the shelf until revision.
That means there's a good likelihood of someone rushing out to buy their coursebook, using it for the course. Finding it expired at revision time, having to rebuy it again (now cost 133% of the original dead tree version). If it's needed in the future, the economies just get worse.
The idea of technical reference books is that they're kept around to reference. It's not like a story, where you pick it up, read it, and vaguely remember the story for ever more..
You need the detail.
If the books were priced at 0.1-0.5% of the cost of the actual dead tree, with a limit of, say one month, they'd have a great line going in the book lending area.
For sales under their current scheme..
I'd love to know what reality they live in, but it sure doesn't look like the one most of us live in (without pharmaceutical intervention).
Just to add to that, in every job I've had since leaving my degrees, a fair quantity of the books I used back then have sat on a shelf, and have been referenced quie extensively. That's after around ten years.
That 'deal' is one I wouldn't touch with somebody else's bargepole.
1. Books are downloaded. 2. Digital screen shots of photos are taken. 3. Digital screen shots converted to Word document using Tablet text recognition software. 4. Free text books. Not saying that's what should happen, but I wouldn't be suprised if it did.
Or buy from O'reilly... Their e-books are open format, no DRM, no proprietary nonsense, and even come with a cross-platform java doohickey to facilitate searching...
So how is it that they can do it without worrying about copying while no one else can? Maybe if you treat your customer with respect, they will return the favor?
I understand that they don't do textbooks. But you could do a whole lot worse for textbooks than O'reilly.
My Ethical Issues in Computing class required almost $200 worth of text books. None were the same from the previous semester, and none were reused the next -- meaning no used books and no sell-backs. That would have been a great place to save 33%. I have never looked back at those books, and never will. Some of my more relevant texts were worth every penny they cost and then some and have seen a great deal of use since.
I finished schooling somewhat more recently, so I've had the unfortunate experience of buying $125 textbooks. In the real world, $125 implies a certain attention to bookbinding. In university, it doesn't. One semester of heavy use can reveal week spines, covers made of the cheapest possible cardboard, and decidedly non-archival grade paper. Perhaps these compromises are made in a cynical attempt to deprive the used market of usable texts.
What surprises me most, really, is that I have never come across a repository of free textbooks available in some standard electronic form - say PDF. If there were enough such books available and written by reputable professors there would be a movement towards making them the standard texts in classrooms.
This is not as implausible as it may seem. There are many cases in which authors have released print versions of their text alongside or after having released electronic versions. In the majority of cases, the freely available electronic text bolsters sales of the print version. Also, e-texts can be revised and distributed easier. With a wiki dedicated to errata and addendums, the e-text could supplement the print version as being up to date and an indisposable reference in some cases. The author, in turn, gets free editing and peer review.
Finally, the success of other free software projects at the university level suggests to me that a free text-book program would be quite welcome. The students would certainly put quite a bit of pressure on the university and its faculty to implement it regardless.
Anyone know if something like this exists?
There are few areas where everyone can win by circumventing some economic thing, but school books are one of them. Buy and sell books from other students and avoid being gouged by bookstores who are raking in absurd percentages.
half.com is doing it. I got all my books during a recent semester for $200, in good condition. I went through the bookstore and totaled up what they would have cost new: $750.
You have just become the embodyment of the real fear of media compaies in the digital age... loss of control. As the internet brings us closer together, distribution channels change. PSP only available in Japan? No problem, I'll buy from Japan. Books expensive at the student book store? Got it covered, I'll buy from half.com.
Make no mistake, DRM is only partialy about copying. The other part is plain and simple control of distribution. DVD region codes do nothing to stop illegal copying. Putting a time limit on your new e-book is not a copy protection gimick. In the first case they want to control who buys when so they can build buzz on their terms and get the maximum manipulation of the audience. In the second case they want to make sure that everybody buys a new book so they can maximize their profits. All of a sudden, half.com is irrelevant and "pirates" aren't even a tiny part of the equation.
In some cases the DRM itself becomes the the control method. Since iTunes has an effective monopoly in online music distribution, the record lables can continue their practice of shaping how their message reaches the consumer. The promise of online music is that you can buy music from any source and put it on any device, but the practice of putting DRM on every track effectively short circuits this dream. Now the music companies get to control distribution in roughly the same way that they always have including the wonderful practices of price fixing and offering horrible contracts to bands because they have no other realistic way of making use of the distribution channels.
Did you read 'piracy' somewhere in that last paragraph? Neither did I. DRM is marketed to lawmakers and consumers as just this little, tiny inconvience to stop the horrible scourge of the evil pirates. If that was what we were buying, it might even be acceptable. But what what we're really buying, in this case, is the complete removal of an entire used book industry. In the case of music and movies, we're buying the continued presence of the distributor to control and overprice what we watch and hear. I don't want those things, but as long as the lawmakers and consumers keep hearing the message of "piracy", I'm gonna have little choice.
TW
I got a COMPLETE copy of Mad Magazine once, and as I looked through it I laughed and, I showed my dad, who got me the gift, now he was a Mad fan from LONG ago before the magazine started going down hill (this was before they added needless color)
Anyways my dad said to me, that's nice you can see it all, but it doesn't have the same feeling. I of course laughed at it, but he continued about how he can't feel the page as you flip through it, everything is automated and so on.
Now my dad is a pretty technical guy, he loves his computer, he used to be a stock trader, this is a guy who is no computer newbie. However he was rejecting the format. And a couple weeks later I realized the same thing.
It's really the same with manga and e-books, I can read Dante's inferno on a computer, but with out holding a book in my hand it feels unreal, and phony, I don't feel the same. It is cheaper to make an E-book but it just doesn't work in the same way as a real book, where you're careful with the pages, you can feel the weight, and each word feels tailored to you.
This might work for the cheapest of all parents or for a class where you really don't need the book, but personally I'm glad I have the source material for my entire life for some of my C++ classes,and wish I had the Java source book we had (I didn't need it really, everything for java was on the web)
Personally I'll take a real book EVERY time, I don't care what people think.
My digital image processing class is going to be pretty math intensive --- probability, statistics, integrals, vectors, Fourier transforms. I will be referring constantly to a math textbook I used two terms ago. If it had expired at the end of the semester, I'd be fucked this term.
This is not my sandwich.
I'd like to see them reprint a series of classic textbooks that are now out-of-print, from the days when publishers didn't waste paper on fluff.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
As a professor, I am seeing a new, and very insidious development. We just went through a pitch from a major publisher for a book that we produce for a local class. We had been self-publishing, and our cost was $25 per book. They were willing to do the editing and publishing for us, and we were ready to talk about developing written materials for thei book, but all that they wanted to talk about was on-line content. When we pushed, it turns out that their new thing is to twist arms to get required web-delivered content in all of their books. So now when you buy a book, you get a code that is valid for one semester.
If this works, they won't care if you sell it used, because the web code is no longer valid, so the book is useless, unless you buy a new code for $15. They get their cut no matter what. If you fail the course, and have to re-take the class, you owe them another $15. If you give it to your younger brother, $15. They always get their cut.
Their web content often includes web-supported and web-submitted homework and quizzes so if faculty buy in, students will have no choice but to pay. Kind of sad.
For each course there were a set of recommended text books, but these were mainly for people who were struggling with the course, and no kick-backs were received - the library had multiple copies of each one (and would buy more if they ran out), so hardly any students bought them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"the court is either going to have to twist itself into at least two additional dimensions to avoid either shooting down EULAs on e-books or overturning more than a century of fundamental copyright law." Well, it shot down over 200 years of private property rights, didn't it?
Since you already have the basics (the course and the book), why do you not check if you can work together with MIT by integrating the book in opencourseware (I do not know if the content matches what MIT opencourseware stands for sofar, but else I think their are other places, or it is a nice startingpoint. That way you get a bigger audience, and hopefully more funding to keep up this work.
I think schools, colleges & universities should be more selfsupporting in this anyway.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Nevertheless, I'm highly opposed to the "subscription" model and clearly see the badness down the road. So, to that end, I've been working (alone now, but hopefully soon to gain colleagues) on a free textbook for my field in the form of a wikibook. In my professional opinion, wikibooks--not commercial EULA-bound e-books--are the "right thing" for academic textbooks. We can all work on them, and it's in everyone's best interests (students and profs) to ensure that these texts are accurate, clear, and monitored for vandalism (which, if it is existed at all, would likely be from paid agents of the textbook syndicate).
I doubt that I'll be able to convince many of my esteemed colleagues too soon, though, because (a) textbooks aren't counted towards tenure and (b) lots of professors make good money writing the damn things (want that new car? Write a textbook for us!) Meanwhile, the textbook reps are knocking on my everyday depositing free textbooks in my office--though they tend not to mention how much they'll cost the students should I assign one.
Little do they know--I'm using these textbooks to help me construct the wikibook intended to destroy them! (sardonic laughter...)
I can't even imagine using e-books in college. The best part of buying used text books is that previous students highlight the important parts and even add useful notes in them. This is one area were "old school" is better than bleeding-edge technology. Plus, can you sell you e-books back to the book store for beer and Arby's money? I didn't think so.
Insightful? Please...
I'm a professor, I attempt to select the best possible book for the course that I teach. I have published books but I have never required one of my books for a course (actually I have distributed electronic versions of portions of text to students to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest by requiring this).
I try to take into account the cost of texts but there are many other considerations and while I might hate requiring a $100 book, what am I to do if I decide this book is superior to an $50 book?
I am not sure what "artificial market" you refer to although I suspect you are referring to the fact that the people incurring the cost aren't those making the selection of the product. While true, this does not necessarily constitute an artificial market. Many products and services (and while I am loath to refer to education as a product but for the sake of argument) have other costs that you may be liable for once you've purchased the original product or service. Think cars and car repairs.
I dont' like the shape of market forces in the textbook industry and many professors feel the same way. Many of us take steps to mitigate these costs (I push fair use to the absolute limit in making electronic resources available to my students at no cost). We simply have so many constraints that the end result is always a compromise.
Finally, I recommend avoiding statements like "Everybody knows..." Its usually a clear sign that what ever is coming next is vastly oversimplified, self-righteous, or just plain ignorant.
I don't know how many times my college kids have come home with the key software for specific courses installed as demoware. They get 30 or 60 days to use it and rush like mad to get the work done before the demo expires.
Here's the problem with your comparison:
The time-limited borrowing at physical libraries is a social solution to an actual scarcity of resources (books) that must be shared among the many members of the library. It's not feasible to make a new physical copy for everyone and give it to them indefinitely.
The time-limited borrowing of an e-book is an artificial limitation because there is no scarcity of copies -- the library, or bookstore, holds one digital master copy and can effortlessly make additional copies for the exact number of readers who want to read the book, at the time they want to read it. There is no logistical need for these copies to be returned, because the library can just make another digital copy for the next requestor. (This is exactly how websites work - a computer stores information, sends digital copies to each agent requesting that information, and the requestors can use the material and store it as they see fit.)
The problem eBooks pose is that authors and publishers still need to be paid for their work, but the sell-a-physical-book model's inherent limitations, which limit the flexibility of transferring copies and encourage payment to the author for multiple copies, do not apply. The digital version's enhancements in portability and copyability are its very strengths -- reading a book on a screen is not so great, compared to the physical book, unless you take advantage of the manipulation features computers offer. But since the creators are used to relying on the physical book's lack of manipulation features to ensure their incomes, the first impulse has been to take them away. We need to figure out an alternative mechanism where people get paid and the text gets freed.
I went to Penn State from 1977 to 1983, and tuition started at just under $1000/YEAR and went up to about $1500/YEAR by '83.
I lived in an apartment with about 6 other people, so my entire college education (2 degrees), and my room/board was less than the cost of tuition for 1 year today.
And go figure...we didn't need a computer to get a good education.
I agree with you on this point. I find the process disgusting. Of course, perhaps publishers should be less willing to give away copies of their textbooks.
Second are used book distributors. Profs expect a lot of support for these expensive books. They need desk copies, supplements, web site support, test banks, etcetera. The publisher has to support the book in use, even if the students are buying used text books. The used book dealer provides NONE OF THIS. They only value they add is storing the book during school breaks and driving it from one place to another.
Publishers, perhaps, should charge for these services something close to what they actually cost, eh? This sounds like a razor-blade economic model: test-bank razors supported by textbook razor blades.
So for an edition that comes out once every three years, the publisher has ONE CHANCE to make a profit - the first all-new run of the edition. Everything else (packaging with extra materials, sell-through, custom pub) is a rearguard action to try to stay afloat until the next edition.
You know that if a textbook contains information a student finds useful then the student will keep it, yes? A textbook isn't-or shouldn't, at least-be solely a source of homework problems. It should be a useful reference, and a start to the owner's personal library.
I bought many textbooks during my university career. Some I have lovingly retained and still refer to every so often. Others I sold the minute I stepped out of an exam. Good textbooks will enjoy consistent year-over-year sales because people keep them. The pool of used books will be small. Bad textbooks will require regular new editions, because nobody wants to hold on to them. Making matters "worse", they last a long time on the used book circuit because useless textbooks receive very little wear and tear.
You see, the value in the book isn't in the part that the used-book dealer sells. He's selling information that he didn't produce, support, or add to at all. The used book industry is essentially a giant leech on the butt of textbook publishers.
Ah. And the used-car industry is essentially a giant leech on the butt of the textbook publishers. They're selling all the design experimentation and engineering expertise invested by the auto manufacturer.
~Idarubicin
OK, I'm not a lawyer, but isn't the first sale doctrine a creature of copyright law, not constitutional law?
The FSD, IIRC, was originally a side effect of the way the nineteenth century copyright laws were written. Publishers claims that used book sales amounted to copyright violations and were ruled specious, because the law as then written did not grant any exclusive rights to them other than the right to copy. This was explicitly written into the law in the 1970s.
However, Article 1 section 8 gives congress the power to secure "exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The nature and scope of the rights congress can give is not limited in any fashion other than it may not be forever. The scope of this power may be limited somewhat by the subsequent adoption of the first amendment, but it is still quite broad.
So, if DMCA flushes First Sale down the toilet -- there's nothing you can do other than work to elect a better congress.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How is copying an e-book a crime? Under what statute? (and don't say DMCA, that only applies to people distributing software, not using it)How is copying an e-book a crime? Under what statute? (and don't say DMCA, that only applies to people distributing software, not using it).
People keep saying this, but I've never seen any evidence for it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
All this is why me and a friend of mine started up our website ScrewBookPrices.com. It allows students to buy books from other students on campus. Its a WIN WIN alternative. The student selling the book gets more then what the school would buy it back for and the student buying the book gets it for cheaper then the book store would sell it for.
Sadly in todays society its "acceptable" to ream students. People complain about the high book prices but very few actually do anything about it so the cycle continues.
I hope this doesn't just get regarded as a plug.
http://seanism.com/
Why? Because sometimes unlimited time paper is better than crippled e-versions of documents.
By crippled I mean not being able to print out more than a couple of paragraphs per section, etc. I suspect most will just pay the full price and get the book.
Let me amend that last paragraph. After one cycle of buying the e-version they'll see profit drop off. First off, someone will figure out how to un-cripple it. Of course expect the publisher to employ the might of the DMCA against that but it'll be too little, too late.
Ity seems that all the books in my fields (statistics, economics) have gone to a three year cycle, with no purpose other than to defeat used textbooks. I've told book reps that I'd take the next book with a wirtten guarantee that it would stay in print for five years, ant they're just not interested.
I've responded by allowing prior editions. In my stat syllabi, there are even alternate homework sets for prior editions.
Also, most (but not all) universities have hoops to jump through before a professor can use his own book. These tend to involve giving up the royalties or proving that there is no viable alternative.
hawk
Needless to say, depending on how popular your subject may be, you can pay upwards of $150 for a [required, mandated, don't have it you're screwed] textbook. Now I understand that much of that money is in fact pure profit to go pay the publishers/authors for their time/research. After all, I can buy a book of the same dimensions at Chapters [Canadian bookstore] for about $40.
I've learned that University is a business, and nothing else. Aims of 'higher morals' were simply a fantasy taught in schools. But if a standard author can be content with the profits from his $40 sell, why can't a university professor that authored the book? Especially, since by the virtue of being introduced in any one university, his sells increase exponentially? Think of it: 3,000 students a year at University X are forced to buy his book. And thats just in one year. Who else can enjoy such market permeation?
Anyways - my thoughts are that textbooks are ripoffs. And just when I thought that it was at its worst - it got even more abysmal.
So - you now pay $100 instead of $150. But you also don't have anything tangible - no books. Therefore, the cost of producing this eBook on CD is nada. Maybe $2 at best. They cash in $98 in pure profits. Now such figures are pure speculation on my part, but needless to say that the final figures won't be all that far off.
Not only that, but that $100 purchase is essentially deleted in 5 months by the author (DRM). Now with a normal book at $150, I can at least resell it for $70... if the new annual edition isn't out [another ploy]... or if I fail the class [as I have], I can at least reuse it.
Not so with 5-month DRMed books. This is an exercise in pure greed if ever I saw it, and the fact that the administration of Princeton sees nothing wrong with this exploitation is even worse. My faith into the integrity of universities suddenly dropped.
I should note that price is normally somewhat irrelevant to me. I am fortunate enough that I can still live at home while I attend. That said, all my money goes to pay university. All of it, so that I may not be caught with a $20,000 debt when I get out. I have bought stuff yes - but pretty much all of it was with either tips I get in the day (I'm a tourguide), and a second job I did a month ago (which went to pay off my previous debt).
But price - is not irrelevant to my friends. Take Corie, and a million of my friends. They're returning here in Ottawa to continue their studies. Most don't live at home because their home is hours/days away. Here they are, now paying rent. That's $400 a month. Plus living expenses. That's what... $200 a month? That's the equivalent of a month's parttime paycheck at a standard lowly job. They are below the poverty line. If they weren't attending university - then they could at least work fulltime. But they can't because university schedule takes up some prime working hours. Then in summer, if they live in Ottawa, rent/living-expenses takes up much of their profits. They'll save up maybe half of whats needed to pay off this year's tuition, if that. They have to take loans, and go further in debt. Maybe they're about $10,000 in debt already. 19/20 year olds.
And this university wants them to buy $100 CDs of text that will go bad in 5 months?
This is precisely why I lost faith in the institution.
Seems to me that 40 years from now, our CDs and DVDs will be difficult to read as well, and that's assuming that the media itself doesn't degrade.
And of course if something is DRM'd to expire in five months, it's not supposed to be readable in six or more months, which would include 200 years later. And even if it's DRM'd but not set to expire, the odds of it being totally unreadable after just five years (because you can't get keys for it (company went under), or can't run the software, etc.) are very high.
This is one reason why I refuse to buy DRM'd music, for example. All the vinyl, tapes and CDs I've bought in the last 30 years, I can still listen to them today (if I hook up a turntable or tape player anyways.) mp3s I made ten years ago are still readable as well, as long as I didn't put them on any media that's hard to read.
But any DRM'd music that I paid for and downloaded today, the odds are very good that I won't be able to even listen to it a few years from now. The DRM software won't run on my new computer, or the purchases will be tied to that computer, or the disk will have failed and the DRM files were tied to that specific disk, or ...
Screw that. I'll buy CDs and make my own mp3s or oggs. Downloaded music from places like iTunes isn't even really signifigantly cheaper, but yet the quality is lower and the usability is much lower.
Personally, there's no way in hell I'd buy 5 month DRM'd electronic textbooks for only a 33% discount. 75%, maybe. But 33%? Screw that -- I could save more than that by buying used and selling back to the store when I'm done. And for a text book, dead tree format is likely to be more convenient than e-book format anyways. And sometimes I like to keep my books for use in later classes ...
Though I suspect that if you pay the extra 33% or so, they'll extend your DRM license for a year or so. Blech.
It's after the Sodom and Gomorrah episode and Lot's two daughters get Lot drunk so they can have sex with him. (It always seems they stop reading the Sodom and Gomorrah story a couple of verses too early.) It's in Exodus. Somewhere.