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The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

lukethomas.com

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Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#11

Post by dmils4 »

lukethomas wrote: post #9
dmils4 wrote: post #8

Custom editions and packaged access codes are the last futile attempt that publishers bookstores and professors have against cheaper Internet alternatives. The one thing your writeup didn't touch upon is digital textbooks- which the publishers actually love since eBooks are usually rentals, so the secondary markets like Amazon and AbeBooks are cut out. I am from SlugBooks- a web app that compares prices between the c…

So you are essentially a search engine for textbooks?

Yep, kayak for textbooks. You can either search by book or search by school/course. If you really want to get angry, look up MATH 203 at Medgar Evers College in NY. A textbook with a list price of $174 is being sold for $330 new, $240 used - available from online sites for less than $10.

There are over 16,000 classes across the country that can save >$100 on their books. Haven't run the numbers yet but the use of custom materials/access codes has EXPLODED, which prevents savings.

We are diff than other comparison engines bc of that course search component. Most students don't realize how easy it is to save (it's surprisingly daunting for students to do this the first time), we facilitate that process.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#12

Post by ohgodthecat3 »

dmils4 wrote: post #8

Custom editions and packaged access codes are the last futile attempt that publishers bookstores and professors have against cheaper Internet alternatives. The one thing your writeup didn't touch upon is digital textbooks- which the publishers actually love since eBooks are usually rentals, so the secondary markets like Amazon and AbeBooks are cut out. I am from SlugBooks- a web app that compares prices between the c…

I had one college course with a custom edition and we still had the option of using the regular edition, (all the page numbers were the same the custom editions only difference was a lack of extra chapters that we weren't going to cover).

The custom edition was cheaper than the regular edition and this is the only reason the professor did this. The book didn't seem to have very many used copies being sold as it was an advanced class and people were more likely to keep the book than sell it.

Just providing context to how a custom edition can be cheaper if the professor does work.

I've also had many professors write their own book and give it for free in pdf or let you buy it for $20 at the university copy center already bound with the option of buying supplemental books that they thought were of good quality.

Maybe my engineering department was different but it seemed most of my professors tried to work to help the students not have to pay large amounts.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#13

Post by aroberge »

I'm going back to teaching this year after being an administrator for 13 years and stories like this just make me mad. I'm committed to join others that make their material available for free (under a creative commons license) and encourage colleagues from other institutions to do the same. The good news is that I soon will have completed a textbook for introductory linear algebra. The not-so-good news (for most of the HN crowd) is that all I write is in French. Fortunately, there are already free textbooks in linear algebra available in English. If enough of us make a stand, within 5 years there might be enough material written to shame anyone showing this kind of disgusting behaviour.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#14

Post by ams6110 »

lukethomas wrote: post #3
tammer wrote: post #2

I saw the same situation happen for many classes at Rutgers... I was lucky and didn't get burned too badly, but I know those who did.

So the professor wrote his own book & then forced students to purchase it every year? Care to explain a little more?

Very, very commonplace even 25 years ago when I was an undergrad.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#15

Post by px1999 »

Pretty much everything surrounding tertiary education needs disruptive companies to come in and restructure it - but particularly the dodginess around textbooks / school bookstores.

On the surface the conditions even almost seem ideal - you have an existing oligopoly where each player has huge overheads and then on top of this add huge markups. You have a somewhat captive market (the students are entirely captive, while the professors are generally pretty free to choose the books that they want), and a product that's targeted towards younger, educated people (people to whom technology isn't a huge burden).

The only thing that's really standing in the way of someone shaking things up is in convincing the professors that your option is better than whatever's being offered by the incumbents. I really, really hope that at some point soon someone takes on the publishers - with a serious product, they'd have the potential to win, and more importantly, to do something useful for making education more accessible.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#16

Post by jedberg »

stevencorona wrote: post #7

I would love to see the textbook industry disrupted.. but how? It's so ingrained in the system. Textbook rentals are a start, but still expensive. I even knew some college students that looked "down" on buying used books, like you were buying someone's used underwear.

I had a professor, way back in the early 00s, who was helping solve this problem. We had no textbook in the class. Instead, our readings were all recently published papers. On the class website he linked to all the papers so we could download and print them if we wanted to. He also negotiated with the author of each paper for the rights to reprint the paper. You could buy the "textbook", which was just a bound photocopy of the papers, for $10 (the cost of printing).

If more professors did this, then the problem would be solved.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#17

Post by macspoofing »

stevencorona wrote: post #7

I would love to see the textbook industry disrupted.. but how? It's so ingrained in the system. Textbook rentals are a start, but still expensive. I even knew some college students that looked "down" on buying used books, like you were buying someone's used underwear.

Find the right incentives. Whatever your solution, it has to make (financial) sense for the school and the professor, otherwise you're not going anywhere.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#18

Post by metafour »

CU Denver undergrad students seeking a degree are forced to take a few 3000+ level courses to meet a cultural diversity requirement. Most other general education requirements can be met by taking equivalent courses at a community college which is what I did. I've always speculated that these are required in order to help the college get some extra money from students. Some of the options for these courses have required materials that can only be purchased from the university bookstore and they consist mainly of printouts of wikipedia articles.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#19

Post by jcnnghm »

lukethomas wrote: post #3
tammer wrote: post #2

I saw the same situation happen for many classes at Rutgers... I was lucky and didn't get burned too badly, but I know those who did.

So the professor wrote his own book & then forced students to purchase it every year? Care to explain a little more?

I had a calculus professor do this at the University of Maryland. Her book was awful. Her teaching method was standing in front of the class, and reading from her book. During one class, someone asked her to explain something a different way, and she explained that the way she was explaining it was the best way it could be explained, which is why she wrote it that way. The worst part is, the next year I had another math course where the professor literally did not speak English, and I couldn't understand anything he was trying to communicate, so she wasn't actually the worst professor I had there.

Re: The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

#20

Post by neutronicus »

stevencorona wrote: post #7

I would love to see the textbook industry disrupted.. but how? It's so ingrained in the system. Textbook rentals are a start, but still expensive. I even knew some college students that looked "down" on buying used books, like you were buying someone's used underwear.

> I even knew some college students that looked "down" on buying used books, like you were buying someone's used underwear.

For what it's worth, I did not know anyone with this attitude. Everyone bought either used or international versions off of Amazon.

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