Textbook Torrents says final goodbye

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Dumas

On a side note, is it really your position that the size of the customer base determines the price of textbooks? I would be interested to hear from other forum members where they have found that the price of their textbooks was directly related to their relative class size. I have not found that to be the case in my personal experience whatsoever.

Yes, it clearly is, due to simple economies of scale. The initial print run of a book has to recover the production costs (that's why HB's are so much more expensive than PBs). If you expect to sell 1000 copies of a textbook, the unit cost clearly has to be higher than if you're selling best-selling fiction where you can be confident of selling 100,000 copies.

[Danny Fekete]

Originally Posted by HarryT

About 10 years ago, but I don't think that the fundamental way that the publishing industry works has changed in that time.

Do you disagree with Richard Baraniuk, then? I think he addresses pretty clearly your economics of scale point, above.

[HarryT]

I think it depends on the field you're talking about, Danny. Creating "customised" textbooks from free content may work in some fields (perhaps economics or sociology are among them - I don't know) but I can't see it working in the "hard sciences".

[Danny Fekete]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think it depends on the field you're talking about, Danny. Creating "customised" textbooks from free content may work in some fields (perhaps economics or sociology are among them - I don't know) but I can't see it working in the "hard sciences".

Baraniuk uses the example of electrical engineering (5:15ish) and signal processing (12:25).

Edit: Why do you think "hard sciences" are qualitatively different in this case?

[HarryT]

I haven't watched his video - I'm just not that interested. I think we're going to have to disagree about this. I take the view that most authors write to make money (I did!), not for altruistic reasons. If there's no money in it, there's no incentive to write.

[Danny Fekete]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I haven't watched his video - I'm just not that interested. I think we're going to have to disagree about this. I take the view that most authors write to make money (I did!), not for altruistic reasons. If there's no money in it, there's no incentive to write.

I regret ending the conversation here, Harry. I really don't think that the evidence bears your position out ("most authors," specifically).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Danny Fekete

Edit: Why do you think "hard sciences" are qualitatively different in this case?

Because you can probably find lots of good and free information on the web about, say, economics or business. I don't think you'd find it so easy to find such information about electromagnetism or quantum mechanics. You can find good individual articles, yes, but putting it together in such a way that it teaches the subject from start to finish would be very difficult.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Danny Fekete

I regret ending the conversation here, Harry. I really don't think that the evidence bears your position out ("most authors," specifically).

Perhaps I'm just old and cynical, Danny, but for me, writing textbooks was just a job that I got paid for. I had a contract to write a book, I wrote it, I got paid, I moved on and did something else (IT consultancy, to be specific). I don't have any romantic notions about writing being different - it's just a way to make a living.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think it depends on the field you're talking about, Danny. Creating "customised" textbooks from free content may work in some fields (perhaps economics or sociology are among them - I don't know) but I can't see it working in the "hard sciences".

I think you have that backwards. I think it would work in most hard sciences (at least for basic college textbooks) but not soft sciences.

Much of the content of psychology, sociology, and economics textbooks is dependent on the professional opinion of the author. This does not apply to Physics, Math, Astronomy, or Chemistry because Newton's Law is always true, and 1+1 will always equal 2, that really bright thing in the sky is called the Sun, and hydrogen will always have one electron circling one neutron.

BTW, I just read your response re:source material. There are plenty of out of copyright textbooks available. The facts have not changed.

[Danny Fekete]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Because you can probably find lots of good and free information on the web about, say, economics or business. I don't think you'd find it so easy to find such information about electromagnetism or quantum mechanics. You can find good individual articles, yes, but putting it together in such a way that it teaches the subject from start to finish would be very difficult.

Baraniuk addresses this point precisely (starting at 10:05ish). Transcribed from 12:14: "[XML as a backbone for the modular bits of information (the equivalent of your individual articles)] lets you interconnect ideas indicating how fields relate to eachother. . ."

[HarryT]

I'll try and find time to watch it, Danny.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Danny Fekete

First, there's the idea that the publisher decides how much to charge because it determines what is economically viable; under circumstances where the publisher is seeking to do more than break even on the costs (which themselves may be variable), the profit margin is arbitrary and I don't think that the publisher necessarily has to have the sole right to determine what it is.

Unfortunately, the profit margin is not all that arbitrary.

The usual error is asking "How much profit can we make?" The correct question is "How much profit do we have to make, to remain in business?". The answer is simple -- enough to equal the marginal cost of capital. And sometimes that number is higher than the best the most profit we can make estimate of the company, in which case they have trouble right here in River City.

And even assuming there is "room for negotiation" between customer and publisher on the profit margin, how much difference do you expect that to make in the price the customer pays? I suspect it will be far less than you might hope.

Textbooks are a special case of publishing. As Harry comments, they have much higher production costs, a limited market, and in some areas, fast obsolescence. (Last years hot computer title is this year's bargain table item.)

Textbooks in digital form will help because you won't have printing, binding, warehousing, and distribution costs, but they still won't be cheap.
______
Dennis

[Danny Fekete]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Perhaps I'm just old and cynical, Danny, but for me, writing textbooks was just a job that I got paid for. I had a contract to write a book, I wrote it, I got paid, I moved on and did something else (IT consultancy, to be specific). I don't have any romantic notions about writing being different - it's just a way to make a living.

I'm not arguing about writing being romantic or different than other pursuits, and though (romantically) I do feel that education and proliferation of knowledge ought to exist outside of a capitalistic framework, it's not pertinent to the argument I'm trying to present. Just the opposite: knowledge generation is moving away from individual authorship to community authorship. Textbook authorship in the way that you used it to make a living is on its way out, as Baraniuk and others in the open education field have demonstrated very clearly. It's not going to be a way to make a living much longer, and I think romance lies in insisting that it is---romance, and the much more dangerous conservatism of insisting that alternate publishing models are immoral. I appreciate that this is not exclusively (or mostly) the tack that you've been taking, but an unawareness of where things are moving when defending an earlier ideal of publishing puts you in a position to unreasonably curtail knowledge access and (in accordance with community-based authorship and education) democracy.

Edit: Harry, I am NOT NOT NOT suggesting that you are intentionally opposed to democracy. I'm suggesting that this could be an unintentional result of your position.

[Danny Fekete]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Unfortunately, the profit margin is not all that arbitrary.

The usual error is asking "How much profit can we make?" The correct question is "How much profit do we have to make, to remain in business?". The answer is simple -- enough to equal the marginal cost of capital. And sometimes that number is higher than the best the most profit we can make estimate of the company, in which case they have trouble right here in River City.

And even assuming there is "room for negotiation" between customer and publisher on the profit margin, how much difference do you expect that to make in the price the customer pays? I suspect it will be far less than you might hope.

"Negotiation" as I meant it may take the form of piracy or shared purchasing and photocopying. Anything that impacts the decisions this sort of publisher makes is part of that broad sense of negotiation. The metaphor could be extended to imagine potential buyers as a union (where they get organised, as Geekman had hoped, I suspect), collectively bargaining against the price of textbooks. Again, though, I think this is becoming moot with open education publishing ascendant.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Textbooks are a special case of publishing. As Harry comments, they have much higher production costs, a limited market, and in some areas, fast obsolescence. (Last years hot computer title is this year's bargain table item.)

Textbooks in digital form will help because you won't have printing, binding, warehousing, and distribution costs, but they still won't be cheap.

They can be $22 for a hard-bound engineering textbook with no warehousing costs. I'd pay shipping. That's still cheap enough for me.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Danny Fekete

I'm not arguing about writing being romantic or different than other pursuits, and though (romantically) I do feel that education and proliferation of knowledge ought to exist outside of a capitalistic framework, it's not pertinent to the argument I'm trying to present.

I'm not sure it's possible for it to exist outside of a capitalistic framework. People will create the content, and need to be compensated, and others will manufacture and distribute it, and need to be compensated. Where does the money come from, and how does it get distributed?

Just the opposite: knowledge generation is moving away from individual authorship to community authorship. Textbook authorship in the way that you used it to make a living is on its way out, as Baraniuk and others in the open education field have demonstrated very clearly. It's not going to be a way to make a living much longer, and I think romance lies in insisting that it is---romance, and the much more dangerous conservatism of insisting that alternate publishing models are immoral. I appreciate that this is not exclusively (or mostly) the tack that you've been taking, but an unawareness of where things are moving when defending an earlier ideal of publishing puts you in a position to unreasonably curtail knowledge access and (in accordance with community-based authorship and education) democracy.

And "community authorship" leads you into the morass that Wikipedia sometimes becomes. I'll use Wikipedia (and do daily), but with distinct reservations and grains of salt, depending upon the topic, because I don't assume that the view most commonly held is correct, nor that facts can be determined by committee.

But you might benefit by focusing your attention on the demand side of the equation, not the supply side. Remember, textbook publishers aren't really selling to you as the student. Yes, you have to buy them, but what texts you buy is determined by the school you attend, and the courses you take. You buy the books required for that class. You don't get to decide which to use.
______
Dennis