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Sell Someone Else's Book On Lulu!

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the class-act dept.

Albert Schueller writes "Lulu is a place where authors can self-publish their books. It's a nice response to exorbitant college textbook prices. In an interesting twist, looks like you might be able to get away with selling other people's books on Lulu and reap a tidy profit. The Lulu offering Calculus Twirly Exponentials by Dave Stuart appears to be simply a high quality scan of the much more well-known, and expensive, Calculus: Early Transcendentals 6th ed. by James Stewart. Compare the preview images available for each at Lulu and Amazon respectively."

34 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah.... by Godskitchen · · Score: 4, Funny

    That sounds legal...

    1. Re:Yeah.... by inflex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As a person who's breaking into the book market with my wife's new novel and seeking an eBook option, this is precisely the sort of crap that we're worried about, just all too easy through modern POD portals like Lulu.

    2. Re:Yeah.... by Cylix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's too easy anywhere.

      You should probably only print your books on photosentive watermarked paper. That way every page that is printed will display a "don't copy that floppy" message when someone tries to scan the page.

      Copyright infringement is a real problem everywhere with every medium and it basically comes down to discovering and litigating your issues. If you are not prepared to deal with those issues then perhaps you probably shouldn't.

      Seriously, bad people do bad things...

      --
      "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
  2. The only absurd part of this... by RingDev · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is that they want $170 for a book on calculus.

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    1. Re:The only absurd part of this... by tucara · · Score: 3, Funny

      Just be glad in the Newton family never patented calculus so that you'd have to pay a license fee to do your homework.

    2. Re:The only absurd part of this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Fuck you, communist. Information wants to be held hostage for money.

    3. Re:The only absurd part of this... by jadrian · · Score: 5, Informative

      Fair price actually. The book is over 1100 pages long. I actually own a version that comes in two volumes, so that would be $85 each. They are used for 3 or 4 semester calculus courses and the quality of the material is really good. It's money well spent.

    4. Re:The only absurd part of this... by dargon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's actually a relatively fair price, however I once spent $80 for a text book that was maybe 200 pages and we opened I think 4 times in the entire semester (10 years ago so memory has a few faults :) ), and that is definitely NOT money well spent.

    5. Re:The only absurd part of this... by fishbowl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Long after finishing college, the Stewart calculus books are pretty much the only texts that remain on my bookshelf since then. The rest of that list is CS material that still gets referenced.

      FWIW my last two real-world jobs have involved doing calculus on whiteboards, which I realize isn't all that common :-)

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    6. Re:The only absurd part of this... by larry+bagina · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My first year, we had a required half credit diversity sensitivity class. The book ($70-80 maybe, it was almost 15 years ago) was about a magazine's worth of reprinted newspaper articles. Printed on campus. I think they laughed at me when I brought it to the book buyback.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    7. Re:The only absurd part of this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Following your rational a book that sold 2 copies and took the author a year to write would be fairly priced at $37,500...

    8. Re:The only absurd part of this... by jadrian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That makes no sense. According to your metric the more it sells the less valuable it is. There is a risk factor there, he could have made little or no money from his book, like many other authors out there. He sells a lot, good for him.

      I've been a teacher assistant for Calculus quite a few times. Many if not most professors tend to follow Stewart's book in their course preparation, but the book is not required material for the students by any means. In fact they rarely buy it. Classes are self contained, we provide exercise sheets, and some professors also provide their own notes. That's enough. And if they do want to read the book for free it is available at the library.

    9. Re:The only absurd part of this... by philipgar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      one problem there, and with the parents reasoning... Most text books are NOT paid for by the publishers. The authors (normally professors at a university) write the book while being paid by the university. The university wants their name on the book (just like they want their professors names on research papers) as it helps the university's rankings (you know those rankings everyone bases college choices on even though they say absolutely NOTHING about the quality of the teaching at the schools). I'm sure the author of the calculus book is doing pretty well because of book sales, but I'd be surprised if he gets more than $10-$15 for each book that sells. The publishers however are raking in the money, and the college students are paying for it twice, once when they're paying professors to write the book, and again when the publisher sells the book. Then the publisher does their best to screw over the students even more, by forcing professor(s)s to sign a contract saying they'll make new revisions of the book every 2 or 3 years. Sure in some fields this makes sense, but I don't think there's anything new being taught in calculus today that wasn't in a book from 10-15 years ago (likely more, although some changes are made to keep the book "relevant" with engineering disciplines, etc). The sole purpose of that is to kill the used book market. Professors can no longer teach a class using the old book because new copies aren't available, and students can't sell/use an old copy, as the problem sets are different (normally that is the main thing publishers want changed in a book).

      Of course, on that note, I remember paying ~110 for this same book new 10 years ago, I guess inflation has been terrorizing the book market.

      Phil

    10. Re:The only absurd part of this... by Capt.+Skinny · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You and I define appropriate salary a lot differently I think.

      Who the hell are you to tell anyone what they should earn annually? You're happy with less than $75k/year so that's more than enough for anyone?

    11. Re:The only absurd part of this... by IICV · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well you see the thing is that the reason why they're earning whatever money they get from royalties is because I, as a citizen of the United States of America, have agreed to temporarily relinquish my right to make copies of their work.

      After all, freedom of speech is a right explicitly enumerated in the First Amendment; it doesn't really matter if someone else came up with that speech (or print) first, I theoretically have the right to repeat it as much as I want.

      So, being the nice person that I am, I relinquish that right. I agree to temporarily let the copy-right for the work reside solely with the author, so they can make a profit off of it in order to recoup the cost of writing the book, plus some extra profit to encourage other people to widely distribute their works.

      Then, after they've had enough time to make a reasonable profit if that work was good enough, I expect to get my rights back. I expect to be able to exercise my free speech rights with regards to that work, with no limit.

      So basically yeah. Steven King only makes money due to the forbearance of his readers. If we actually cared, we could set the limit to something like "if it makes more than $75k, it's in the public domain" or whatever.

      (as a side note, I will never be able to exercise my free speech rights with regards to any work published in my lifetime - life of the author + 75 years guarantees that I'll be dead by the time it goes free)

  3. Copyright infringement, anyone? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like a good way to get sued.

    1. Publish someone else's book on Lulu
    2. ???
    3. Profit!!!
    4. Get sued!

    --
    My blog
  4. How is this news? by jewishbaconzombies · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like all in a day's work for your average middleman. Good job!

  5. Irony by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MAFIAA go after casual downloaders, destroying people for having downloaded a few songs which are usually freely available on the radio anyway. In the meantime, people are scanning and selling other people's books for profit - and getting away with it. Wasn't this exactly the sort of thing that copyright was supposed to prevent in the first place?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:Irony by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      doesn't prevent copying of his ideas (which is a right given to us by nature).

      Wow, you sound like a lawyer. Or you're in marketing. Because you're using twisty little words to say nothing at all.

      By your same reasoning, it is my natural right to kill someone. However the law gives that person's family a way to seek "justice" for the death of their loved one?

      You know if you read actual copyright laws, it is mentioned somewhere that you need the author's permission in order to copy his work, with the following exceptions... Then it goes on to list the exceptions. Nowhere in the law does it talk about "natural rights" to copy things, or "ways to recover lost earnings". That is for a judge to decide.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  6. Re:Confession: I actually RTFA... by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >>>we have what amounts to a protest over the cost of the original book...

    Bullshit. It's theft of another person's labor. Equivalent to if you spend a year of your life as an engineer, but you only get half the pay. The other half gets distributed among thieves claiming credit for your work, even though they didn't do a damn thing. They are parasites... nothing more.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  7. I'm not sure what you're looking at... by mutube · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. Go to the Amazon page for Calculus: Early Transcendentals
    2. Click the cover image (Click to look inside!)
    3. Go to the Lulu page for Calculus Twirly Exponentials Volume 1
    4. Click on the Preview link (under the cover image)
    5. Look at the cover page of both: they are different
    6. Look at the first page of both (and every page after): they are the same

    I've refreshed to make sure it's not a temporary bug with Lulu that has been fixed. It happens every time.

    --
    Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
  8. Re:College Textbook Prices by SomeJoel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A little off topic I guess, but how did college professors get around the ethical challenge of selling their own books to their class as a requirement and charging whatever they felt like for it?

    ~S

    They downplay it by never using or even mentioning the required book in class.

    --
    <Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
  9. Re:College Textbook Prices by deinol · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even worse is that many university bookstores will mark up prices above the MSRP. I remember once as a student I found the exact same book in both the Textbooks section and the normal bookstore area. The one in Textbooks was 20% more expensive. And they wonder why students started buying their books on Amazon.

    --
    Got Apathy?
  10. Author discusses source material in lulu preview by djk1024 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On page 12 of the Lulu scan, the author discusses the relation of his book to "Calculus: Early Transcendentals" and explains that he is attempting to provide an alternate which exactly follows the topics and formats of the original so that students can us it as a less-costly substitute. I didn't go beyond that so maybe it's a scan, but the author does address the issue.

  11. This is stupid. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm not really outraged by the person who posted the book on Lulu for profit. I'm outraged by the fact that anyone would pay good money for a pirated textbook...especially when you can get it here. This is unacceptable, people! Learn to Internet!

  12. Article Submitter is a Math Professor / Author? by _KiTA_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >>>we have what amounts to a protest over the cost of the original book...

    Bullshit. It's theft of another person's labor. Equivalent to if you spend a year of your life as an engineer, but you only get half the pay. The other half gets distributed among thieves claiming credit for your work, even though they didn't do a damn thing. They are parasites... nothing more.

    No, the parasites are the ones who change the edition of the book every 6-12 months, making the used book market nonexistant and allowing for inflation like this (usually in the realm of kickbacks to teachers/schools to "encourage" them to cycle out the editions on command).

    $225 list price for a goddamned math book? Apparently selling textbooks allows for some really high quality drugs.

    Having said that, note that the article submitter's name first comes up on Google as a Math Professor in Washington State who teaches Calculus 3. Even more amusing is the fact that Whitman's Math Department uses Lulu to sell their own line of College math books.

    Let me interject real quick with the statement that I do not intend to suggest any shenanigans -- I just thought it was really unusual. In a good way. I've never heard of a college designing, testing, and printing their own textbooks -- and at vastly better prices ($9 instead of $225) to boot! And that's assuming you don't just want to download the PDF for your iPad or whatnot.

  13. Re:Author discusses source material in lulu previe by Kadaki · · Score: 3, Informative

    The preview doesn't seem to let you go further than page 12, so I can't say for sure, but that explanation appears to be a smoke screen to hide the fact that it is in fact a copy of Calculus: Early Transcendentals. The copyright page is definitely taken from the original textbook and the table of contents appears to be as well.

  14. had it happen to me by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've had this happen to me, with a copylefted textbook I wrote. I think the situation was simply that the guy who did it knew the book was freely available as a PDF, but didn't realize it was possible to buy a copy in print, so he just set it up on lulu so he could produce one copy for himself. Can't remember if he was complying with all the terms of the license or not. I contacted him about it, he explained what he was trying to do, and we straightened everything out. I think lulu had by default put him as the author, since the book was made on his account, but he wasn't intentionally trying to claim authorship of my work.

    Anyway, this seems like the biggest non-story ever. Lulu is a print-on-demand publishing business. They're one of these online businesses that is able to make a profit because they have no human beings paid to interact with customers on a one-to-one basis. I use them for my books, and I'm fairly happy with them, although there have been a few hassles here and there. When you set up a book to be produced and sold by lulu, you upload a pdf and click through on a form that says you agree to a certain contract. The contract says that you have to be the copyright owner. Sounds like whoever put these scans online clicked through the contract, but is violating it. Nobody at lulu reads your book when you upload it. They're not a full-service publishing house with acquisition editors, copy editors, etc. Whoever posted the slashdot story could have just clicked on the "Report This Content to Lulu" link and told them it was a copyright violation, and presumably lulu would have dealt with the issue. But I guess it's more fun to have the story run on slashdot.

    --
    Find free books.
  15. Response from Lulu by jbcox · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. Claiming copyrighted material as your own is a clear violation of our policies and we are pulling down this content from our site right now. If at any time you come across questionable material on our site, please do not hesitate to contact me at jcox@lulu.com.

    1. Re:Response from Lulu by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sad part is, they didn't bring it to your attention it appears. Good old CmdrTaco and the poster (Albert) thought it'd be more effective to not tell you and sensationalize it a bit here in some sort of attempt to turn this into yet another GPL war.

      Bringing it to your attention properly would have simply meant they clicked on the link on your website to report it.

      I appreciate you taking the high road here and trying to say thanks, but lets call it what it is, this is a bunk story written for ad clicks by a couple of douche bags trying to get more page views from the angsty slashdot teenagers.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  16. OMFG!!! by Anita+Coney · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are you telling me that people can use technology to infringe copyrights?! Why haven't I heard about this before?! How is this even possible?

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
  17. Editions by jklovanc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What irks me most about textbooks is the "editions" scam. Every year or two a "new" edition comes out which makes the "old" edition not usable in the current course. The scam is that there is very little difference between the "new" edition and the "old" edition; just enough to change page numbers and a few examples. The worst part is that there is no need for a new calculus book; how much has first year calculus changed in 12 months?

  18. Re:College Textbook Prices by Spewns · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you would like to see a detailed case study of an experiment into this effect, please look up "America"

    Or, you know, you could maybe try traveling to America.

    Who'd want to do that?

  19. Conversely... by notknown86 · · Score: 3, Funny

    As a person who's breaking into the book market with my wife's new novel and seeking an eBook option, this is precisely the sort of crap that we're worried about, just all too easy through modern POD portals like Lulu.

    As a person who's breaking into the book market with your wife's new novel and seeking an eBook option, this is precisely the sort of crap I'm relying on