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I teach in a university mathematics department. I don't doubt that stories like this are real, but very few of my colleagues collude with, or indeed have much p
by impendia 14y ago
I teach in a university mathematics department. I don't doubt that stories like this are real, but very few of my colleagues collude with, or indeed have much patience with, the publishing industry.
Indeed, the opposite is common. Walter Rudin is the author of several well-known books on mathematical analysis. The publisher, McGraw-Hill, jacked up the price of his books to stratospheric levels, and Rudin fought back -- which wasted him a lot of time, and (I believe) cost him a substantial amount of money. All so that students wouldn't be gouged when buying a copy of his book.
In the end, Rudin eventually lost. $95.56 for a very skinny (and quite popular) book on Amazon right now.
Moral: As content providers we don't need to figure out better ways to work with the publishing industry. We need to figure out better ways to work without them.
- guscost 14y agoAwesome, I've been using his book on analysis.
- bootload 14y ago"... As content providers we don't need to figure out better ways to work with the publishing industry. We need to figure out better ways to work without them. ..." Photocopier.
- dredmorbius 14y agoReally? How about scanner and OCR?
- bootload 14y ago"... How about scanner and OCR? ..." I was thinking of school books & standing in the line for photocopiers for reference books in the library.
- lynnae 14y agoMy graduate university kept a good number of copies of required texts in the library that could be lent out for the length of the course. Reserved copies (i.e., can't be taken out of the reserved area) were available as well. No student had to buy any books unless they wanted to. I think that's my favorite system.
- stephengillie 14y agoSmartphone, big microSD and a few hours are the best version. Then OCR later if you need to - chances are you'll still be wasting your time and will never touch your photographed textbook.
- Wingman4l7 14y agoHow did fighting back cost him money (if you don't count his wasted time)? Kudos on him for valuing the spread of his work over any personal loss in royalties!
- impendia 14y agoI'm afraid I heard this secondhand a long time ago and don't know all the details. I could be wrong about that.
- jcampbell1 14y agoI know a couple of people in textbook sales. Their job sucks, and the way they describe it is that there are two type of professors: those that won't talk to them, and those that try to maximize personal gain from the sales process. The professors they deal with know the game, and just string them along with soft promises and keep asking for more nights on the expense account. The day to day job in textbook sales is just bribing professors with expense accounts.
- raverbashing 14y agoMaybe more teachers could use CafePress and self-publish
- Wohlf 14y agoI think you could do it with Lulu as well.