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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.