Quote:
Originally Posted by b0rsuk
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Not plain wrong.
Mark Pilgrim (Dive in Python, Dive Into Greasemonkey, and others) makes his living doing other things, and isn't
trying to write textbooks.
Think Python is being offered as a PDF, but care to guess what the actual hardcover from Cambridge University will cost? Nowhere
close to $10, I assure you. And I question whether it will be marketed as a textbook when it is.
There are various universities putting course material on line, but that isn't the same thing as textbooks.
Textbooks are specifically written to be instructional materials used in assigned course work in a school or college class. The are published in hardcover, and have far higher production costs and smaller markets than other books. The economics won't permit a $10 publication.
As course work moves increasingly on-line, and as publishing of textbooks moves (
islowly) to electronic form, the economics will change, but still not that dramatically.
Meanwhile, you can't hold computer books or electronic syllabuses up as examples of why HarryT is wrong, because neither are textbooks as we use the term.
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Dennis