Ad-supported Textbooks Are Here

prostoalex writes "Talk to any student about the price of the college textbooks, and you're likely to hear similar complaints about the cost of the textbooks, the rip-off buyout prices at local college bookstores and insidious publishers who keep changing editions every few years just to change the page numbers and kill off the used books market. Freeload Press, says the New York Times, will distribute ad-supported electronic textbooks to students of 38 universities. However, it seems that neither professors neither New York Times are impressed with the quality of titles so far: 'The reading difficulty is created by Freeload's use of PDF images, which retain the printed page's layout without reformatting. Navigating around a single superwide, supertall page requires lots of clicking and zooming and patience. The company will soon use improved software that can automatically adjust the text so it is more legible, said Tom Duran, a founder of Freeload Press and its chief executive.'"

Comments

This doesn't solve the original problem

[Antony-Kyre]

This doesn't solve the original problem of the textbooks being expensive in the first place. If we simply throw money funding towards higher education, and say, "No!" to newer books that don't give us anything useful, problem solved.

Re:This doesn't solve the original problem

[Millenniumman]

The prices aren't high because of marketing, they are high because they can be. If a course requires a book, then students have to buy it. The books compete to be used in courses, but after that they must be used by the students. If everyone used the same book, prices would be astronomical.

Re:This doesn't solve the original problem

[Frumious Wombat]

If you want prevent the spiral in education costs, then convince your (legislature/board of directors) to (1) reign in the explosion of deans with their retinues, (2) reign in the athletics departments (if you aren't top 10 nationally, cut the program back to intramurals and fire the surplus coaching staff), and (3) reign in the entitlement mentality of students these days. The last would go a long way to controlling costs, as things they consider necessities now (such as single dorm rooms at all levels, well-equiped modern gyms, cable tv to the rooms), were luxuries or unavailable 20 years ago. Trim back the gilding, and control the explosion of non-educational management, and you'll have a shot at controlling costs.

Re:This doesn't solve the original problem

[rbrander]

>The prices aren't high because of marketing

Well, "sez you" ... I was working from the post of the one guy who claims to work in the business.

>they are high because they can be.

I *think* you are agreeing with me. Prices CAN'T be high in a free market because a competing author and publisher will produce a book of equal quality and be happy with a 10% profit instead of 200%. So the only way for "because they can be" to be true would imply market failure.

If the educators forcing you to use the product were getting kickbacks, it would all make sense, a closed-loop racket. Yet many posts appear to indicate that profs are distressed by the situation as well. Leading to the assumption that the profs have no meaningful choices outside a tight little publishing cartel that limits choice.

Cartels can only form where the barriers to entry are high, or again some maverick will start up a publishing house and offer cheaper books. Is that the case, or have we missed something?

don't know whether to laugh or cry

[geoff lane]

``Hey, I've got an ebook that is difficult to read, let's sell it to students. We'll fix the readability problems later.''

The world is in serious need of open textbooks to put an end to the ripping off of students. This problem existed 30 years ago and so far nothing has been done to prevent the publishers making education more expensive than it need be.

E-books are not ideal for degree level study

[ctid]

I teach in a university in the UK and I must say that I'm not convinced that electronic books are the best way of reading around a subject for degree-level study. When I'm trying to learn about something that is very new to me, my preferred approach is to work with two or three books which cover the topic. I find the relevant section in each book and keep all the books open at the appropriate pages on the desk in front of me. After a while, I'll normally find that one of the books is easiest for me to understand, so I will focus on that one but refer to the others when I need clarification. If one of the books is not helping at all, I make another trip to the shelves to find something else and see what that can contribute.

I've never been able to replicate this "system" using electronic means and I tend not to try any more. However, my students never seem to try to use books in this way. If they want to find out about something, they type a phrase into Google and then start picking through the thousands of hits they inevitably get (I teach computing). Typically they will give up quickly because the amount of information coming back is overwhelming, but even if they do find something, I'm sure they struggle because it's very hard to take in a lot of information when you're reading it off a screen (I believe that this is less true if you already know something about a topic). Ironically, the only complaint we regularly get about our classes is that the library is not helpful, even though we have bought literally hundreds of titles in the last couple of years. We now believe that most of our new students have never used a library before they come to the university, so we're going to actually show them how we go about learning new things using books. Not sure how we're going to do that!

I think I've rambled off the topic a bit here; I think my point is that I would discourage my students from buying electronic books in general. As a university lecturer, I think it's my responsibility to: (a) Recommend the minimum possible number of books for purchase (usually one per module); (b) Ensure that there is a good variety of relevant books in the library; (c) Encourage my students to actually use the library when their Googling fails them.

Re:E-books are not ideal for degree level study

[Baavgai]

For those of us who grew up with nice, comfortable, dead trees, nothing will every really replace the feeling of hefting them.

However, younger folks seem far more at comfortable with reading from a screen. Don't assume that the media will necessarily be an issue for most new students. The issue is primarily one of format.

If an electronic resource is presented in such a way as to be easily navigated, then it is superior to it's printed counterpart in may ways. Being able to search an entire book with a click is invaluable.

I have PDF and print versions of many technically references. The PDFs get opened first at which point the paper is usually only for browsing.

Re:E-books are not ideal for degree level study

[ctid]

I have PDF and print versions of many technically references. The PDFs get opened first at which point the paper is usually only for browsing.

I'm 43 and I recognize that I have grown up with books and that I am comfortable using them. However, I've been playing around with computers for more than half of my life and I've been on the web since the start, so I'm used to reading stuff off a screen. My views on paper vs screen are based somewhat on the sheer shallowness of my students' approach to learning. I can't help feeling that they don't concentrate enough when they are trying to get information from a screen. It's unusual to see a student spend a significant time staring at a document on a screen, for instance. They tend to search for something else before they will scroll through the document they have already opened. On the other hand of course, they have no idea how to get information from a book.

I'm aware that much of what I'm saying is impressionistic - I've certainly never measured any of this stuff - but introducing my students to another source (ie books) must be better than what they are doing now.

used texts increase the price of new texts

[TubeSteak]

Professors, however, are not blind to the shocking prices of new textbooks. Nor are they deaf to the complaining voices of their students. They know that students increasingly buy used textbooks, and that this in turn affects the prices on new texts that sit unsold on the shelves.

Riiiight...

There's two different people selling books:
Publisher ---> College Book Store
College Book Store ---> Student

If the publisher is losing sales to used books, the book store could easily absorb any publisher price hike, considering that the book store is selling the used texts and is part of the publisher's problem.

My guess is that being in the textbook business is like being a utility company. You get to ignore normal market dynamics and act as if your minimum profit margin is enshrined in law.

There's really no incentive for anyone other than the student to act in a rational manner.

It depends on the subject - and the students

[njdj]

Talk to any student about the price of the college textbooks, and you're likely to hear similar complaints

I wonder if the person who wrote that has talked to enough students.

On my desk is the 3rd edition of "Classical Electrodynamics", by J. D. Jackson. This title has been the standard text for advanced classical electromagnetism for about 40 years. The 2nd edition came out in 1974, and the 3rd edition (the latest) in 1998.

The book is a sturdy hardback, designed for decades of use. I still use it occasionally, and I have a PhD in Physics. It's priced at $97 direct from Amazon, or "Used and new from $55" from Amazon's resellers. This is cheap for such a book.

Any student who thinks he/she can afford an iPod, but not a book like this, has got seriously screwed-up priorities.

Illegal in Belgium

[lowieken]

In Belgium, ad supported textbooks are illegal. Any publicity/sponsoring in education is illegal, in all three language communities, which is where the responsibility for education lies.

This is part of the very broad consensus in our country that education is a public good. Messing with that is guaranteed to get all kinds of people really angry.

Its not so bad

[JustOK]

I really think that [Drink Coke] anything that improves [Save on Laptops at Dell.ca] what we are teaching the next generations [Shop at Walmart] is a good thing. If ads help in the production [/\/\cDonald's] of the text books, and to keep costs down [Amazon.ca] so that more people [NetFlix] can be better learnerers [HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead] is a GOOD THING.

I'm crying

[tomstdenis]

... because god forbid our children [and yes that includes college kids] actually LEARN A DAMN THING. Let's make more money, take take take, and now let's be even more invasive.

It's already hard enough to motivate kids to study. Now they'll have ads bothering them? I really fear for the future.

Any smart professors would just change their teaching style to avoid text books as much as possible [hint: there are usually other books on any given topic outside the mainstream academia].

Tom

Re:lazy professors

[john82]

Or perhaps a generous infusion of Exxon "advertising" allows one to focus less on certain pesky environmental (oil spills) and economic (profiteering) issues?

Re:great!

[AnyoneEB]

Uh, how does that relate to the software being able to change the font size/page layout? The feature being suggested sounds more like a web browser's ability adjust the layout when you resize the window.

Why is a Calc book $100?

[cjsm]

I was shocked when my nephew was taking calculus a couple of years ago and he had to pay over $100 for a book. When I went to college in the early 70s it was around $25, if I remember correctly. What is the excuse for this price? There is no new information in them. Its not like a medical or computer science book where there is new data coming out every year which must be incorporated into the text. There is no reason to rewrite them every year. There is no need for new editions. There are already 1000s of editions available. They could just select the best written, clearest classic texts from 1910-1990 and republish them, and it would probably be a superior text then the run of the mill average text nowadays.

The truth is, the writers just copy from older texts and rephrase them. A Calculus book shouldn't be priced at any more then $30, since it should be priced like a commodity product, which is what it is. Charging a $100 a pop proves it is a crooked scam between book publishers and universities.