4 ms·
Having worked at a company that made both Kindle and printed books, here's something to think about- if someone can make a Kindle book for $9.99 (and this seems
by gkoberger 17y ago
Having worked at a company that made both Kindle and printed books, here's something to think about- if someone can make a Kindle book for $9.99 (and this seems low, even for a book, let alone a text book), they can make a printed book for $19.99.
The problem isn't that books are printed on paper- paper is cheap.
If teachers contributed to and utilized wikibooks.org (or similar services), we could have free textbooks (or, low cost, if you choose to buy/print them- and, there are services that will let you print wikimedia wikis).
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoI'm curious why wikibooks hasn't taken off like it should. I don't know if the content isn't engaging enough or if the formatting is off.
- shrughes 17y agoWikibooks doesn't reward the authors at all. Wikibooks doesn't pay them money, it doesn't put their name on their work, and it doesn't let their contribution last forever -- others can go and muck it up with their editing. (If anything I've said here is wrong, then let's say it's the perception of these problems that is the problem.) Also, the current books aren't particularly good and the syntax for editing them is arcane.
- gnosis 17y agoProject Gutenberg, Flickr, and Wikipedia (to cite just three examples... there are many more) don't pay their contributers money. On Wikipedia contributions can be mucked with by others. Yet these sites are all wildly successful.
- coryrc 17y agoShort articles on a specific topic require little coordination among contributors. A book used for class can't have redundant sections. Each part needs to build upon the previous sections (for math, anyway). The book should have a consistent style. Anyway, that's what khanacademy.org is for.