Your comment is not related to the subtext of my comment. The guy has an editor for his textbook contributions, but no editor for the material he gives his own

Your comment is not related to the subtext of my comment. The guy has an editor for his textbook contributions, but no editor for the material he gives his own class. Therefore, the textbook material gets more review than something he does on his own. To your point, if he is unqualified to write exercises for a textbook, he would also be unqualified to create these for his own class. If he is underpaid...that is largely irrelevant- if he were really underpaid, he wouldn't have taken the job. The article was of the anti-corporate bias perspective, which is why it was on Salon.com, that this is because of the "profit motive" of the publishers. However, that perspective is also nonsensical. The examples do not change that much from edition to edition- they are seldom created from whole cloth. Even in his tortured example of complaining about the golden ratio problem was one of textbook translation- pointing out that, as an author, he cared about things other than the effectiveness of the text. It is true that many textbooks are of low quality...but considering the bias of the writer, the whole article is a bit self-serving, while also being hypocritical. All points about the incompetence of textbook buyers stand though. They choose for the worst of reasons, with effectiveness almost never even on the table as a concept.