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First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

nytimes.com

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Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#21

Post by cypress-hill »

willarson wrote: post #13
huhtenberg wrote: post #6

Is the existing level of pricing justified at all ? I mean a $209 book does sound like it carries a huge margin.

The problem is that the average textbook sells a small run of copies, and doesn't benefit from economies of scale. Unfortunately, it seems that the professors and the publishers both like the current system, and the students have very little influence on the process. There are some solutions, but the incentives don't seem to be in place to encourage them. The best seems to be reducing the overall number of textbooks,…

"The problem is that the average textbook sells a small run of copies, and doesn't benefit from economies of scale"

WHAT??? for example, stewart's calculus book has been used for twenty+ years all over the english speaking world. you find me a ny times bestseller that has had that kind of run

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#22

Post by cypress-hill »

its amusing how harvard stanford and princeton with endowments of like forty quadrillion dollars shake and quiver in the face of a thirty person publishing firm.

the big schools could trivially "nationalize" textbooks with online material. it would be cheaper just to buy a new laptops for students who don't have the means to access the data

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#24

Post by iamdave »

Some great comments here, but I gotta jump off track for a second.

I kind of want to know who or what the lead was for this article. No way the NY Times just goes through TPB looking for the most piquant torrent and write a tilted article about it. Seriously....revenge?

College students are frugal people. Between work and school it's not easy making a living to put food in your belly and pay the costs of student housing month after month. They want to save money, books cost astronomically more to purchase than they do to produce, and this columnist reduces all of this down to "revenge"?

I've got to admit, this is one tilted article if I've ever read one; quotes from publishing companies, none from TPB who if this writer had done PROPER research instead of stating oversimplifications would have seen are happy to talk with the press rather candidly about their operations.

No quotes from students, no quotes from TPB directly about the issues, and Randall Stross has the capacity to call this whole thing "revenge"? The best mention of TPB was on user statistics, what the eff

Pardon my language, but for the NyTimes, this is bullshit.

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#25

Post by dhbradshaw »

I'd like a new model for academic publishing. Normally, two of the most important roles of a publisher are quality control (hopefully), and marketing. In academics, mechanisms are probably already in place to take care of both of these functions. In any case, distribution should no longer be an important part of the services a publisher provides. For academic publishing, then, the most important function of a publisher may be to provide the actual physical form of the book.

This is the new model: let the authors compete on the quality of their content, and let the publishers compete on the physical quality and price of the books they publish. Let the authors keep the rights to the books, but let them then allow many different publishers to compete with different form factors and prices for the books. Maybe then we would get much lower prices for higher quality physical books.

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#26

Post by beaudeal »

having just graduated myself, this is really not surprising. its also not really that new of a concept -- after dealing with one semester of college book prices (which cost my friends and i 400 to 600 dollars each) many people started pirating books. there was a copy store down the street who would copy entire textbooks for $20. there was also the student who bought the books for the largest classes, took the pages apart from the binding, scanned them with an auto-feeder, and sold e-copies for $1 each which could be printed free of charge at the university's library. to me this just sends another signal that it is time for these stagnant industries to adapt to the times, and become more innovative with production and distribution of their materials. they also need to realize that college students won't accept being taken advantage of with ridiculously marked up prices - so they can either change and benefit or be left behind with nothing.

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#27

Post by rms »

henning wrote: post #10
rms wrote: post #2

Don't forget to search emule, very obscure media is where emule excels. Also, remember to share with the entire class! :)

If you're feeling lazy and don't want to install anything, you can also find websites with links to filesharing sites. They have the same kind of defense as a torrent tracker in that they don't actually host files, they just have links. They frequently feature highend technical books from Springer Verlag, Elsevier, et al. We're through the looking glass here, people.

A closed online site for sharing textbooks would really take off. The PRQ has been unstoppable so far. It can't really be stopped.

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#28

Post by Zev »

lxbui wrote: post #7

My community college chooses books that cost $15-$20, it was nice. Then at the University levels they hit me with $200 books. As for new editions, I understand that Biology changes frequently, and the books might need to be changed periodically, but classes like Calc I shouldn't be updated every other year.

I'm taking Calc I at my community college right now to get it out of the way instead of taking it next semester. The textbook costs $110, used. I cant remember how much it would have been if it was new. Probably around $150.

Then on the flip side, I've got a class next semester that has 4-5 books required that cost a total of $50. So it's not dead set "Community == cheap, University == expensive" Its closer to "((University || Community) == expensive)" :\

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#29

Post by gaius »

cypress-hill wrote: post #22

its amusing how harvard stanford and princeton with endowments of like forty quadrillion dollars shake and quiver in the face of a thirty person publishing firm. the big schools could trivially "nationalize" textbooks with online material. it would be cheaper just to buy a new laptops for students who don't have the means to access the data

Is this not what MIT are doing with OCW?

Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

#30

Post by yummyfajitas »

silencio wrote: post #15
lxbui wrote: post #7

My community college chooses books that cost $15-$20, it was nice. Then at the University levels they hit me with $200 books. As for new editions, I understand that Biology changes frequently, and the books might need to be changed periodically, but classes like Calc I shouldn't be updated every other year.

Unless you're in pretty advanced bio classes, it doesn't change every year like the textbook editions suggest. Also I have had community college classes where the text cost upwards of $200. I've also had classes where the used book cost $5 and the prof was willing to buy it herself if you couldn't afford even $5...

The material doesn't change, but the homework problems do...or at least the order of homework problems/chapters may change.
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