

First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry. - markbao
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/technology/27digi.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

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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.

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jmtame
It's a nice start, but this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. This will be a
difficult problem with certain majors.

I've taken several economics classes, and you have to purchase a new book for
the semester in order to get a key card inside of the book. This will let you
activate an online account, which will open up Flash-based homework. This is
all linked into the school's grading system. Many classes _require_ the
student to go through this registration process, or you could be dropped from
the class entirely.

And economics is just one example. I had the same setup in several business,
psychology, and engineering classes.

I'm sure this may work for some of the books, but I wouldn't really look at
this as the end of expensive textbooks.

~~~
vaksel
Most teachers side with the students when it comes to books costing an
outrageous amount. So most of them avoid feeding publisher's pocket books.
i.e. When I was in college most teachers just uploaded copies of homework
problems on blackboard, and never used any of that published based info. + all
of the problems were based on material discussed in class, so you never had to
buy the book in the first place.

There are obvious exceptions, usually when the teacher is the one who wrote
the book, and wants to profit off his students. i.e. I had one class where the
guy had us buy 3 books, 2 of which we never even used. Surprise, surprise they
all had the teacher's name on the cover.

~~~
Xichekolas
When I went to college (2005 grad), almost all my textbooks were optional. A
couple friends and I usually pooled our money and bought one to share, which
was great for Midterms/Finals, since we studied together anyway. The books I
actually kept were things like SICP, which were cheaper to begin with.

I wonder at what point the online editions of these books become so detailed
that they compete with the University course itself. A lot of them already do
all the grunt work for the Professor (giving quizzes/hw and grading them). All
you have to do at that point is get accredited and make some kind of exam
system and you have a substitute for the actual class.

$209 seems awfully pricey for a book, but not too bad for an intro course in
Biology. And frankly, your intro courses are ripe to be taken over the net,
because they are already given in anonymous lecture halls with 1000 people in
them.

Imagine some student showing up in the Dean's office with her transcript from
Prentice Hall, showing off her 4.0 in online courses and ready to dive into
her major as a Junior.

~~~
silencio
I'm looking into transferring to a university to finish my BSc in computer
science (dropped out of HS, went to a community college), and all the ones
I've looked into usually had some sort of cap on the number and type of online
classes you were allowed to take. Unfortunately. I would not mind taking
nothing but online classes for most intro classes where hands-on stuff was
either not necessary (like..CS?) or where you only had to actually show up to
class for a lab (like chem, bio, anatomy..).

That being said, I took online classes because it let me slack off and then
still get an A in the class, but it actually took _more_ effort to get the A
because of the extra work to prove I wasn't just showing up to take exams. But
the timing was more convenient for me. Sooo..

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h34t
Create an account at gigapedia.org and you'll see the extent of books
available online for free. It's amazing. It's become my new Amazon for
checking out new stuff that I'm not sure if I want to buy.

(All yee free market crusaders, don't worry -- I still have a regular
truckload of books coming my way from Amazon -- as much as my budget allows.)

How unfortunate that my budget can swallow much less than my brain!

~~~
chandregowdac
its the fate, what we need is to just go with it. it will carry you the way it
wants as we have a saying in sanskrit "vidi likithalekani parimastrum na
shakyathe

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

~~~
henning
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._

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

~~~
markbao
It did, and met its fate.

[http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-campus-
copyrig...](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-campus-copyright-
battle-moves-to-textbook-torrents.html)

~~~
rms
:/

When will pirates learn that you need to host in a secure country?

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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.

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mwerty
For intro books for self study, I recommend Dover publications - around 12
dollars a book.

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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.

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aneesh
This is why book publishers are so excited about textbooks being distributed
on the Kindle (or similar device). It virtually eliminates the used book
market. Of course, if the book is just static content, it's much easier to
pirate in electronic form than paper form.

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s3graham
I'm not sure if this applies to all majors, but one great thing about Math/CS
at Waterloo was that the majority of reading material used was written by
profs there. The little math dept. printing office latex/dvips/lpr'd and
spiral bound it, and you just paid the cost of reproduction (more or less).

That's (yikes!) 10 years ago now, but I hope it hasn't changed.

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lxbui
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.

~~~
silencio
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...

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

~~~
silencio
But the material isn't changing, which then begs the question as to why the
hell the professors and teachers believe that using a brand new edition is a
good idea. That's the key point. Homework problems don't need to be changed,
unless you're worried about people cheating from folks who've taken the class
before - in which case, change the _exams_ , and change which homework
problems are being assigned. Even then it's their loss/problem if they decide
to cheat. And it's not that the problems were incorrectly written -
corrections are usually minimal - it's that if the problems change, what
happens is that it's fundamentally the same question except numbered
differently.

I've seen this happen so many times and I'm sick of it because the likes of
all my _intro_ classes from chem and physics and bio to calc and CS have not
fundamentally changed SO much that it is impossible to use a text that is a
couple years old.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I completely agree with you: it's a scam.

But we, the profs, don't have a lot of choice in the matter. Problem 1: we
need to assign a text which is available to all students, and I can't
guarantee availability of enough copies of the old editions.

I'd love to use this book
(<http://store.doverpublications.com/0486457710.html>) costing $20 for calc,
but that brings up problem 2: I have to use the book the department assigns.
Changing this would require joining a curriculum committee, turf wars,
academic politics, etc. Yuck, I'm a scientist, not a politician.

I usually work with my students to save them some money (copy problem pages,
etc), and I bought old editions when I was an undergrad. But that's about the
best I can do. I have given the problem some thought, and have a startup
concept (with some code). If I can overcome some technical issues, I'll go
live with it.

~~~
silencio
With problem 1, wouldn't the old edition still be cheaper than the new? Or
would the publisher just stop publishing the older edition? Even with new
editions I've come across situations where the bookstore was having an
impossible time ordering enough to meet demand.

And the second...I just guess I don't understand _why_ new editions have to be
adopted so quickly sometimes. I taught myself all sorts of subjects out of
used books I got at garage and library sales. Years later actually taking the
classes with a brand new edition of a text, nothing's changed. Only the
price..used books would be dirt cheap and the new edition would be $120. So
the department assigns a book, why do they have to assign it? Kickbacks from
the publisher? My question above about the publisher discontinuing the older
edition?

I guess I'm ultimately mad about this whole situation (and yes, I was a
textbook torrents user although they never had the texts for my classes). I
even had one class at a CC (I think it was anatomy) where the class itself was
only somewhere around $70 but the materials and mainly the text|online
access|workbook were in the $300 range. I about flipped out then.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The publisher indeed stops publishing the old version. It would be cheaper for
the students that can find an old copy, who knows if they will all be able to
do so?

>So the department assigns a book, why do they have to assign it?

Do you want to buy a new book for calc 2 if you take it with somebody besides
me? Or buy a new book if you switch sections?

Standardization makes sense, especially at the intro level. I'd prefer if they
standardized on cheap calc books, but as I said, making that occur involves
academic politics. Perhaps one day, when I've got clout...

~~~
silencio
Hmm, okay, now I'm hating them more and more.

>Do you want to buy a new book for calc 2 if you take it with somebody besides
me? Or buy a new book if you switch sections?

Well, my idea was to standardize on cheaper books, not that it should be a
free-for-all (for your reason precisely). It does involve academic politics
and you'd run into the problem with having a lack of books in some cases. This
sucks on all sides.

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alex_c
Useful tip: depending on your major, buying international editions of books
from, e.g., <http://firstandsecond.com/> can save you literally thousands of
dollars over a 4-year program. Subject to local laws and regulations, yada
yada.

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brentr
I recommend open sourced textbooks. They are often of a much higher quality,
they are written by people who have a true passion for the subject, and most
of all they are free.

Check out textbookrevolution.org.

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rms
I hope the publishers eventually embrace digital downloads, but DRM sucks and
they're never going to go for non-DRM because of the obvious reasons. I bought
a digital download of a textbook once (it seemed like a good idea at the
time), and it took me hours to slowly print the book to .pdf because there
were enforced delays to slow down the process.

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

~~~
willarson
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,
allowing each one to have a larger run and thus to better benefit from
economies of scale (and be cheaper to buy at the same profit margin for the
producers). But to achieve that we would have to stop letting professors
choose their own books, and professors are not known to appreciate being
herded.

~~~
cypress-hill
_"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

~~~
ig1
Stewart isn't an "average textbook"

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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

~~~
gaius
Is this not what MIT are doing with OCW?

~~~
pm
Similar, but it's not quite the whole picture. I've downloaded the materials
from a wide range of classes, and the quantity of material and subsequent
potential for greater understanding varied greatly.

Lecture notes are no replacement for a well-written textbook, especially if
you're an autodidact attempting to further your horizons.

