DRMed textbooks

[Redcard]

For anyone suggesting that someone crack the DRM, fair warning, in many universities this will qualify as "cheating" and will invoke the Academic Dishonesty clauses that might be in play.

Sadly, DRM or no, textbooks have always been a crappy racket. All this is doing is admitting it to you in advance.

Before ebay and amazon, I'd pay around $100-$200 a book, and sell it back for $15-$20. Then, it'd get resold for $90-$170. I'd much rather rent the book for 2/3rd of the cost, tbh. If I'm going to be ripped off, I'd like to do it in a way that costs me as little as possible.

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by Redcard

For anyone suggesting that someone crack the DRM, fair warning, in many universities this will qualify as "cheating" and will invoke the Academic Dishonesty clauses that might be in play.

Can you point to any examples of this happening? DRM cracking may be illegal, but it hardly seems to involve what most people would consider academic cheating.

[Andrew H.]

$140 is, unfortunately, not out of line for a textbook in many fields. http://www.amazon.com/Civil-Procedur...4349730&sr=8-7

Although it's far from the only thing that's expensive about an education.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that etextbooks are tightly DRM'd; if they weren't, a huge percentage of students would pirate them. (Claiming: (1) it's too expensive; (2) publishers are greedy; (3) professors are greedy; (4) universities are greedy; (5) university bookstores are greedy; and (6) everyone but me is greedy...I deserve free books).

But I think I'd rather pay more for a paper textbook that I could mark up or sell back - I think we typically got 25% of the new price, and the used book was sold for 75% of the new price.

[BenBanned]

Textbooks are a scam, just like most parts of college.
They had a textbook torrent site, but it got shut down. As others have said, earlier additions are the best bet for textbooks. Grabbed my history text last semester for 2.00 on amazon.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

$140 is, unfortunately, not out of line for a textbook in many fields. http://www.amazon.com/Civil-Procedur...4349730&sr=8-7

Although it's far from the only thing that's expensive about an education.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that etextbooks are tightly DRM'd; if they weren't, a huge percentage of students would pirate them. (Claiming: (1) it's too expensive; (2) publishers are greedy; (3) professors are greedy; (4) universities are greedy; (5) university bookstores are greedy; and (6) everyone but me is greedy...I deserve free books).

But I think I'd rather pay more for a paper textbook that I could mark up or sell back - I think we typically got 25% of the new price, and the used book was sold for 75% of the new price.

I don't have a problem with the books being DRM'd. I have a problem with the book being a rental. THAT is is greedy. It costs them nothing to make it a full purchase.

I do think it is too expensive, but I have purchased textbooks for more than that before.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Do what students have always done, forever - a few team up to get one copy, crack it and share it.

Or cut out the middle man - get it from the slightly darker net.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

You still have all the costs of writing, editing, layouts, legal, research, marketing, overhead, taxes and retail cut. The only cost you lose is the paper. Generally speaking that's around 15% of the total costs, though it's entirely plausible that the costs are higher for low-volume titles like textbooks. Perhaps 20% or even 25%, but probably not much more.

I've asked before, but you ignored the request. Where are you getting these percentages from? How do they correlate to different sized print runs? If it's something like a blog, what is the rationale for believing it over any other loud voice in the room? And since this is a thread about textbooks, how about a nice study detailing the cost breakdown of Textbooks?

Numbers should not be thrown around like they're facts without at least some statistical background in the form of a citation.

[Krytes]

Originally Posted by ficbot

You'd be surprised. I had a take-home mid-term once with an essay question that began 'discuss, in narrative form, the history of literary criticism as outlined by SoandSo in Chapter 4 of your course text.' And this was in 2000, when we were still in paper and every textbook was on reserve at the library so you at least had that option.

Which brings me to my second gripe...
There's been a copyright battle at my university for the last half year or so. Until now, the administration has been paying a flat fee of $1-2 per enrolled student, plus a few cents for every copyrighted page photocopied. This agreement also enabled profs to place reserved copies of required course textbooks in the library.

This year, the copyright group wanted to charge a flat fee of about $40 per enrolled student (the student population is over 30,000, so that adds up to a nice chunk of change) rather than using the previous system. The university wouldn't pay, so the copyright agreement has lapsed as of a few days ago and profs no longer have the right to place reserved copies of required course textbooks in the library. Gah!

[Krytes]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

$140 is, unfortunately, not out of line for a textbook in many fields. http://www.amazon.com/Civil-Procedur...4349730&sr=8-7
It should come as no surprise to anyone that etextbooks are tightly DRM'd; if they weren't, a huge percentage of students would pirate them. (Claiming: (1) it's too expensive; (2) publishers are greedy; (3) professors are greedy; (4) universities are greedy; (5) university bookstores are greedy; and (6) everyone but me is greedy...I deserve free books).

I would happily pay the asking price for the ebook (well, I'd grumble a bit, but I'd pay) if paying for it actually enabled me to buy the ebook. I'd throw in the quibble that an electronic textbook should be formatted so that it is as readable as its print counterpart (many are riddled with formatting errors which make the text unpleasant to read), but that's a side issue. My main problem is:

A book that I've bought should not expire. I've kept most of my university textbooks and refer back to some of them years after the course has ended. I don't want to go anywhere near books which go dead.

Also, given that it's an ebook, I'd like to be able to read it on my ebook reader. It should not be locked to my computer screen only.

The claim is always that books (music/videos/games) HAVE to be DRMed, or else they'll just be pirated. In the case of books, I don't think that this makes much sense. Digitizing a paper book for free is possible, but it is quite time-consuming and extremely tedious. Given the choice, I would always choose to pay for a book that the publisher has digitized for me, but who would pay to rent deliberately crippled software?

http://xkcd.com/488/

A few publishers have tried offering non-drm books for sale. In the case of O'Reilly, their ebook sales actually increased. In the case of David Pogue, although the book was pirated, his sales stayed the same or actually increased slightly. Both experiments make interesting reading.

http://boingboing.net/2010/01/22/ore...ops-ebook.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/11...l#previouspost

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by KevinH

The funny thing is if you actually ask the publisher reps that come to campus to push their "textbooks" they will tell you that the cost of textbooks is high because of the extremely expensive cost of printing and binding in limited quantities!

Hey, it is possible... Higher ed is a very specific market, so maybe paper costs are higher than I imagine. Or, they could be snowing you.

Unlike most people, though, I don't approach these things with the default assumption that "They are out to screw you."

Originally Posted by KevinH

So where is all of the money going for the DRM ebook version that expires in 8 months? To subsidize the paper copies? I don't think so.

I dunno, we might need to find some insiders. Or pore over some trade rags.

Regardless I don't think there is any excuse for the expiration date, especially when combined with high prices.

Maybe it would make sense for the student body to register their discontent with onerous expiration dates and the like. Because, y'know, students are often focused and easy to coordinate around a single issue like this.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Krytes

The claim is always that books (music/videos/games) HAVE to be DRMed, or else they'll just be pirated. In the case of books, I don't think that this makes much sense. Digitizing a paper book for free is possible, but it is quite time-consuming and extremely tedious. Given the choice, I would always choose to pay for a book that the publisher has digitized for me, but who would pay to rent deliberately crippled software?

Whether most people who can afford a $15 novel and who can buy it simply from Amazon or B&N would go to the trouble of pirating the book is one question.

Whether students would copy a non-DRM'd textbook that costs $140 is a no-brainer: almost all of them would if it meant that they didn't have to spend the money. You can see that from the responses to this thread alone. (And of course this is even more the case when you keep in mind that students may have to buy $1,000 worth of textbooks in a semester.

[Krytes]

Whether students would copy a non-DRM'd textbook that costs $140 is a no-brainer: almost all of them would if it meant that they didn't have to spend the money. You can see that from the responses to this thread alone. (And of course this is even more the case when you keep in mind that students may have to buy $1,000 worth of textbooks in a semester.

I'm a student and I'm telling you that I would pay $140 for a non-DRM'd textbook if it were offered and if it were formatted legibly. In that case, it would be a choice between a large physical book which I'd need to find shelf space for and a more convenient electronic version of the same thing, for about the same price. If there were no DRM, I'd also be able to make a backup or two on a different device, so I'd have no fears about losing my book when a hard drive failed or a device got lost/destroyed. In short, it would have most of the benefits of a physical book plus a few extras.

But why, I hear you ask, would I pay for the book if it had been pirated and was available for free? It's a simple question of ethics. If someone has made their work available in a non-DRMed format, that represents a conscious decision on their part. They realize that anyone could easily copy and redistribute the work, and they're taking the chance that people will choose to do the right thing and pay for it. I feel a sense of responsibility in response to the implicit trust placed in me, which is why I have never (and would never) pirated or redistributed a non-DRMed work of any kind. In my opinion, companies that treat me as a potential criminal by locking down their media deserve little respect or consideration.

That's only my personal reasoning about the issue. Others may have their own reasons for choosing not to pirate non-DRMed files.

In any case, I wish that the textbook companies would try the experiment themselves before bleating on about how they need to lock the files.

[OtterBooks]

In college I ate foods exclusively and for long periods of time that are not meant to be consumed as such. I'm surprised I didn't get scurvy. It's college. You do what you gotta do.

[abookreader]

I've been to college, graduate school and now I'm currently the Mother of a college student.

$140 for a Rental book is unconscionable and if it were my son I'd have the DRM off that sucker before it ever hit his iPAD.

For anyone suggesting that someone crack the DRM, fair warning, in many universities this will qualify as "cheating" and will invoke the Academic Dishonesty clauses that might be in play.

That's interesting because I've never heard of one single student running into issues over DRM removal. Really don't know how a Professor or University would even know but I guess that if they were going to have a laptop/netbook/iPAD inspection for DRM at the beginning of every lecture my son could just keep his DRM'd copy on his Mac and then keep his unDRM'd back up locked safely away in secret.

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

(Claiming: (1) it's too expensive; (2) publishers are greedy; (3) professors are greedy; (4) universities are greedy; (5) university bookstores are greedy; and (6) everyone but me is greedy….

1 thru 5 often true. 6 often false.