Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads

jyosim writes "A site called Textbook Torrents is among the many sites popping up offering free downloads of expensive textbooks using BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer networks. With the average cost of textbooks going up every year, and with some books costing more than $100, some experts say that piracy will only increase." Having just completed graduate school, I can attest that quite a few books are in that more-than-$100 range, and that they're heavy besides. But the big-name textbook publishers are much less interested than I am in open textbooks, even if MIT has demonstrated that open courseware is feasible, and Stanford and other schools have put quite a bit of material on iTunes.

Comments

Re:I support this

[wanerious]

The majority of cost for me to go to a community college here in California is the books, and it is such a scam by the book companies, which also left me wondering "does the teacher get a kick back?"

Yes, teachers do get a kick back. One of my professors told our post grad class (during one of the much loved 'pub lectures') how they could stand to make $1000s from recommending the 'right' books.

I'm a physics/astronomy professor, and this is news to me. In fact, there is a state law (OK) that prevents us from receiving *any* financial incentive from textbook reps. In fact, it is even illegal for us to sell our evaluation copies. There are always unethical people on both sides of the street, I suppose.

Re:Dirty thieves

[stranger_to_himself]

Academics often contribute to textbooks without being paid. I wrote a chapter for a textbook recently and am currently working on another, and I won't get any financial return for either - I consider it a part of my job. Having said that the books do turn out to be quite expensive, I put that down to the low numbers the publisher expects to sell.

Writers of very popular course books will get some return, but for most of us writing specialist texts this isn't the case.

Students are suffering already

[betterunixthanunix]

No offense to you, but students are already suffering. We are routinely charged for books that are simply rearranged copies of older editions, just so that we cannot buy used copies (professors often assign problem sets from the book, and if the problems are in the wrong place and in the wrong order, or have modified details, it becomes impossible to do the homework). We are charged as much for the rearranged edition as if it were a book containing brand new material.

I'm sorry, I know your job depends on the publishers being able to rip us off, but most of us don't have jobs. I've been able to land decent summer jobs because of my skills and major, but the majority of my friends are either unemployed or will not make enough money this summer to completely cover the cost of their books. This expense is added to the price of tuition, which some of my friends can barely afford. If the new American dream is to go to college, get a degree, and make lots of money, these publishers are pushing more and more people out of that dream.

I'm not exaggerating, by the way. A lot of people have trouble coming up with the money for textbooks. A single $100+ book would be manageable, but when it is a matter of 6 or 7 such books every few months, it becomes a problem. It flies in the face of copyright law (pre-DMCA), but I can see why people would turn to torrents to get their textbooks.

Re:Dirty thieves

[necro81]

There are very, very few academics that make any kind of living off of doing textbooks. Fewer still make the sort of per book royalty that you are assuming exists. It's usually more of a one-time payment. Professors aren't like John Grisham or Tom Clancy.

Changing editions every few years is something done by the publishers. I know, I used to work very closely with the local (independent) college bookstore. We would specifically try to get used copies of books that professors request, because it would be cheaper for students (and undercut the corporate-owned bookstore down the street), and only then resort to new. But, when a publisher changed the edition, the used market for that book would dry up. I don't know where all the old copies went, but usually we couldn't even find them.