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KevinH · 01-06-2011, 12:55 PM

Hi,

Speaking as a professor, please don't paint us all with the same brush. I don't write textbooks, I research and publish journal articles. That said, when I teach a course, I have to choose from what the publishers have available. The publishers are the ones going out of their way to constantly update their books and to stop publishing previous versions to force students to not be able to buy "used books". I really have no choice unless I want to write and publish my own textbook and give it away for free. I have high hopes that the Open Source Textbook movement at MIT will take over and all textbooks will be Open Source versions (but I am not holding my breath!). I get nothing for choosing a textbook (no money and no tenure or promotion is based on it).

I actually go out of my way to try and reduce the overall cost to the student by selecting just specific chapters out of books and publishing them electronically, trying to stay with the oldest editions that the campus bookstore can get enough copies of, etc.

I am on sabbatical now and I am going to be sitting in on a PhD level course and bought the textbooks for a single class and the bill came to over $500 (for one class!).

Textbooks are outrageously priced and students should fight back. Talk to the administration. Talk to the professor. It is the big publishers who are the problem here. There is no reason for an e textbook to be priced even close to what a hard printed copy would be.

My 2 cents.

01-06-2011, 12:55 PM	#18
KevinH Sigil Developer Posts: 8,884 Karma: 6120478 Join Date: Nov 2009 Device: many	Hi, Speaking as a professor, please don't paint us all with the same brush. I don't write textbooks, I research and publish journal articles. That said, when I teach a course, I have to choose from what the publishers have available. The publishers are the ones going out of their way to constantly update their books and to stop publishing previous versions to force students to not be able to buy "used books". I really have no choice unless I want to write and publish my own textbook and give it away for free. I have high hopes that the Open Source Textbook movement at MIT will take over and all textbooks will be Open Source versions (but I am not holding my breath!). I get nothing for choosing a textbook (no money and no tenure or promotion is based on it). I actually go out of my way to try and reduce the overall cost to the student by selecting just specific chapters out of books and publishing them electronically, trying to stay with the oldest editions that the campus bookstore can get enough copies of, etc. I am on sabbatical now and I am going to be sitting in on a PhD level course and bought the textbooks for a single class and the bill came to over $500 (for one class!). Textbooks are outrageously priced and students should fight back. Talk to the administration. Talk to the professor. It is the big publishers who are the problem here. There is no reason for an e textbook to be priced even close to what a hard printed copy would be. My 2 cents.