
California passes groundbreaking open textbook legislation - drostie
https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/34288
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waterlesscloud
I am hugely in favor of this move. It's a tiny first step to decreasing the
cost of education and further opening educational access to truly everyone.

But, if I may indulge in a cynical moment, I note that one of the touted
benefits of CC-BY in the article is that commercial companies can develop
tutorials from these tax-payer funded books.

What if the tutorials then become the required texts? Are there any safeguards
from this? If not, it's inevitable that it will be done.

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rmc
It would be better if they choose CC-BY-SA, which requires that derived works
be under that licence aswell.

(Neither CC-BY nor CC-BY-SA block commerical use, and that's fine IMO)

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simonbrown
If it was share-alike, why would companies develop tutorials, since they could
be re-published by other companies at close to cost price?

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rmc
There are loads of companies the make money off open source software. Same
principal.

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gosub
There is something I don't understand. From the article it seems that this
only provides for the creation of free/affordable textbooks, but does not
force the use of them in colleges. Am I wrong thinking that affordable
textbooks are already available? What is being done to prevent colleges and
professors from using 150$, annual, nth edition of the same old textbooks?

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Steuard
Speaking as a professor, I'd be furious if some legislator told me exactly
which textbook to use. I'm concerned about book prices, certainly, but
mandating a specific text would immediately shut down the few attempts at
innovation in textbooks or curriculum that do exist.

If the new books are of comparable quality to the current market leaders in a
given discipline (and especially if we eventually get some competition between
free texts), then all that will be necessary will be an education campaign to
make sure faculty know what's available. We do care about this stuff! (Or at
least, a lot of us do.)

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brazzy
And some care about the kickbacks from forcing students to buy $150 textbooks
that cannot be bought used because there's a new "edition" every year that
shuffles the practice problems.

That's what needs to be prevented in _some_ way.

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dhimes
Who's getting kickbacks? I've never gotten a kickback. I really want to know
if you know of a kickback scam.

The high prices could be due to just the opposite problem: professors are
particularly difficult to sell to. They are _individually_ picky about how
their subject matter is presented, and textbook meetings (where we try to
agree on the textbook among colleagues at a particular school) are frustrating
and difficult.

The time and effort expended in selling those books are (probably) enormous.
There's no institutional path-to-sale. Decisions are made by the professors
themselves, meaning it's close to b2c marketing of a b2b product. The problem,
in business terms (stolen from a VC spiel to an entrepreneur group as to why
they don't fund educational software) is that "the customer is dysfunctional."

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steve19
Professors write textbooks and make their students buy them. Thats the scam. I
remember vividly the pain during college of buying $150 textbooks that would
be worth $30 the next year because a (n+1) edition would be released with a
couple new pages just to mess up all the page references and exercises.

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dhimes
That's a very small effect. A professor doesn't make much money off of a
single textbook- selling to one class wouldn't be worth the trouble of
writing. Even revision (working with the editor) is aggravating. And if you
have co-authors? Forget it.

Writing the text book is an act of love and/or vanity. Only if your textbook
becomes a "standard" (Halliday/Resnick, etc.) does it provide direct financial
rewards.

EDIT: I agree with you about the 3-year cycle, but that's not the authors'
doing, it's the publishers'. That's _their_ business model.

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ivan_ah
> Writing the text book is an act of love and/or vanity. >

You are making the assumption that the author will make a deal with a
traditional publisher which will give him/her a 5% to 10% royalty cut. This
strategy does not not come out to a lot of money.

I am currently self-publishing a textbook˚ and getting 75% profit margins: $40
sale price - $10 printing cost = $30. My students and friends have been my
editors and my proofreaders. LaTeX is my typesetter. If I can sell 1000 copies
each term, that would be $60000/year which would pay my rent and allow me two
write for a living.

To be honest, though, I must say that love and vanity also factor into the
motivation for this project, yet I had always thought of it as a business all
this time. Your comment is spot on dhimes, and made me learn something about
my true motivations. Thx!

________

[˚] A math and physics textbook for adults. It covers high school math,
calculus, mechanics, E&M and linear algebra in just 350 pages. Email if you
want to know more.

~~~
dhimes
My friend, unless you are extremely well known or a brilliant self-marketer,
you are going to learn something important about the industry. There's a
reason that the finances of the industry work out the way they do.

Importantly, if you want widespread adoption, you need to target a course.
Yours targets several. I've seen a few hybrid-course experiments where the
instructors combine courses that have been traditionally taught separately
(like calculus and physics), but they are to my knowledge still rare. I've not
seen a course like the one you are writing a textbook for. Who teaches such a
course?

~~~
ivan_ah
> if you want widespread adoption, you need to target a course.

You may be right about that, but I think there is also value in a single book
which covers all these subjects in an integrated manner. Especially Calculus
and Physics, which are very co-dependent.

Imagine the use case of someone who wants to learn science on their own.
Perhaps he/she is taking an online course which has calculus, physics and
linear algebra as prerequisites. Traditionally this would mean he/she has to
get three different textbooks (400+ pages each) and slog through all that
material. There are excellent free books out there on all of these subjects so
money will not be an issue, but going through 1200+ pages will be very time
consuming.

This is the gap I want to fill: (1) textbook for self-learners, (2) add-on
material for a university class, (3) reference book for adults who want to
review the material they learned while at uni.

For audiences (1) and (3) having an 5-in-1 product is definitely a good thing.
For audience (2) having all the extra material might make my book appear off-
topic and decrease interest. In the next iteration, I am going to think about
splitting the narrative to make books for individual subjects to cater more to
(2).

~~~
dhimes
I wish you well in your endeavor. It's quite an undertaking!

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tingletech
I work for the California Digital Library, and most of my work involves using
or writing open source code; and this establishes the California Open Source
Digital Library.

Ironically, we launched a textbook site (only for UC) this week
<http://licensed.cdlib.org>

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jug6ernaut
I do not know enough about this to be for or against it. But as a recent
college grad it leaves me with two obvious questions.

1\. This litigation doesn't address the issue of overpriced textbox, simply
bypasses it all together. Is there anyone out there saying that the current
selection of textbooks is bad in some way other then there price? I find it
astounding that they would pass litigation in an attempt bypassing a whole
industry instead of actually addressing the issue.

2\. Why can these textbooks be made without this ligation?

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sageikosa
Probably trying to bypass Texas, which usually decides text book standards
based on market consumption.

Not sure how subsidies are going to make anything "better". I would think it
would be a way for a lot of low quality producers to flood the market. Now,
rather than competitive pressure potentially keeping quality in place, the
state will need to provide oversight functions, either in awarding subsidies,
or in mandating (and deciding) what goes into the textbooks, either of which
will be another great place for patronage jobs.

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Zenst
Sound brilliant with one small question "So, in addition to making the digital
textbooks available to students free of cost, the legislation requires that
print copies of textbooks will cost about $20. ". Small question about biasing
for those students who have access to a device that can read the free open
source version, for many a hardcopy is also more suitable. So to legaly
control a price saying "about $20" does somewhat raise questions as to the
definition of "about" as a fiscal term and more so. Who do you pay to print
out your own copy? Becasue as it reads, if you print it out then you should be
paying "about $20" for it and this is completely unclear. Least to me it is.

Still motives are good and anything moving in the right common sence direction
has to be applauded.

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nathan_long
Yeah, the $20-to-print requirement will get tricky. Imagine a biology textbook
with detailed color pictures. Do you have to remove some because color
printing is expensive? Is it acceptable if you can print a text-only version
of the book for $20 and look at the pictures online? Is it acceptable to sell
a supplementary illustrations book?

The real win here is for students to be able to download the whole book for
free. In principle, your entire textbook budget for college could be the price
of an e-book reader.

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justincpollard
So now textbook authors are forced to license their books in such a manner? Or
is this a choice that certain authors can make?

If it's the former, financial incentives for textbook authors have fallen
precipitously. So, the question is, who's going to write these "free, openly
licensed digital textbooks for the 50 most popular lower-division college
courses offered by California colleges"? Might the authors receive government
subsidies? If this is true, then we're simply shifting from a market mechanism
to a government funded model. Either the cost of writing a textbook won't
actually change, the quality will go down, or we'll have many fewer options to
choose from.

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sentientbicycle
"So now textbook authors are forced to license their books in such a manner?"
No. This would be much bigger news if that were the case. This is who would
make them from the council digest: "The bill would require the council to
establish a competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty members,
publishers, and other interested parties would apply for funds to produce, in
2013, 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and related
materials, meeting specified requirements." This will enable the exact
opposite of your last three conjectures. It will decrease the cost of
textbooks, the quality will go up, and we'll have even more options to choose
from. Plus this is a big win for other educational enterprises. Under the CC
BY license outside industries will be able to utilize the material for
commercial endeavors.

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jimhefferon
I offer a Linear Algebra that is Free. Some years ago I was contacted by some
people in California and prompted to apply to become some kind of official
Free source in that state; it involved filling out some forms on some web
sites. That I can tell, nothing ever came of it. So I'm a bit dubious about
this initiative.

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damirkotoric
I love his response in the video. Seems like it took the guy only a couple of
seconds to realise how much sense the idea makes. He would have done his
research prior to the meeting but his attitude toward it is great.

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jonny_eh
So which textbooks will this include? Do they need the publishers' permission
to redistribute their existing work under a CC BY license?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Quoting from the linked text of SB 1052

"The council shall establish a competitive request for proposal process in
which faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties may apply for
funds to produce the 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source
textbooks and related materials in 2013.

Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed to limit or restrict the
council from developing or acquiring, either for a charge or for free,
existing high-quality digital open source textbooks and related materials that
otherwise meet the specifications of this section."

So it looks like next year there will be a RFP for funds for developing the
texts (assuming they don't use existing digital open source texts). And anyone
(including folks here) could apply to that RFP, though I assume people used to
the process will have a distinct advantage.

An earlier section of the bill establishes a committee to determine exactly
which 50 books will be developed.

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Steuard
I wonder if they'll use the existing CC-BY textbooks produced by OpenStax (or
others) for some of these courses? <http://openstaxcollege.org/>

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emehrkay
As a non-California resident, Jerry Brown seems to be doing a pretty
impressive job. He seems to talk about the real issues, especially when Cali's
budget, and puts good legislation through.

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Evbn
Brown is a California resident.

~~~
emehrkay
I meant to say "from the perspective of a non-California resident"

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gscott
The idea is great but the textbook companies just will tack on manditory $85
software while not having to pay book royalties... the insanity shall
continue.

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justindocanto
Curious if any fellow HN'ers know when these textbooks would be made
available. Dont see any info on the linked page.

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maxerickson
One of the bills establishes a committee to select the courses, so presumably
it will be a little while.

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manishsp
Great step from california. Hoping that some `indian` politician read this :-)

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albemuth
Feynman would be happy.

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rorrr
Fucking finally.

I hope the rest of the country follows.

p.s.

It's pretty sad this obvious move is considered "groundbreaking". All it took
is a pair of balls.

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flexie
Alright, textbooks are expensive and it's a step in the right direction. But
with average costs for textbooks around $1,200 per year it's not much compared
to the cost of tuition.

~~~
mmt
Consider community colleges. At least in California, their tuition is still
low enough that textbooks are a significant portion of the cost.

