5 ms·

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 w

by steve19 14y ago

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.

dhimes 14y ago
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.
- brazzy 14y ago
  > 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. Unless you sell it to a new class (possibly multiple classes) every year. > Even revision (working with the editor) is aggravating. That assumes an editing process that isn't streamlined and automated towards the singular goal of making previous editions obsolete and forcing students to always buy the most recent one.
  - dhimes 14y ago
    Unless you sell it to a new class (possibly multiple classes) every year. For what? $1K a year? Would you do it? I wouldn't. The money isn't there. That assumes an editing process that isn't streamlined and automated towards the singular goal of making previous editions obsolete and forcing students to always buy the most recent one. That's quite a conspiratorial stretch to think the authors do that. Think for a moment about what it would take to write a textbook that would be acceptable to a group of experts. You would be an expert in a very small part of the field. It would take you immense work and study to make sure you had the facts right on all of the parts for which you are not the world authority. That is really hard work. The three-year obsolescence plan is a publisher model, not an author model.
    - dave5104 14y ago
      If I were a professor who wrote a textbook based on a class I teach, of course I'd make it the textbook I use and make everyone buy a copy. Chances are that the textbook's material closely matches what I actually want to teach in the class. Why wouldn't I want to use my own path through the material? No other textbook is going to match identically or synthesize the material in my way.
      - dhimes 14y ago
        I agree. So you would sell, assuming it was an introductory-course textbook for a popular class (best-case scenario), what- a few hundred copies? And that's under the conditions above. My mechanics teacher wrote our textbook. We had about 10 people in our class. How much money do you think he made? Even if a few other schools adopted it (a VERY difficult task unless you work on your network of friends- which doesn't always go over well in academia), we're talking small money. He could consult a few hours a year for an aerospace company or something and make a lot more. That's my point.
      - Evbn 14y ago
        Why not give the book away to students as part of their tuiton and earn your salary as a university professor?
        nnnnnnnn 14y ago
        Because human beings generally have selfish interests. If you tell a person they may own and control a thing for profit, many will choose to do so. Unsurprisingly, this is a choice made by a large number of professors
- ivan_ah 14y ago
  > 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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      > 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).
cafard 14y ago
I can remember exactly two professors who had us use their books. One's was out of print, so we got photocopies for free.

by steve19 14y ago

dhimes 14y ago

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.

brazzy 14y ago
> 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. Unless you sell it to a new class (possibly multiple classes) every year. > Even revision (working with the editor) is aggravating. That assumes an editing process that isn't streamlined and automated towards the singular goal of making previous editions obsolete and forcing students to always buy the most recent one.
- dhimes 14y ago
  Unless you sell it to a new class (possibly multiple classes) every year. For what? $1K a year? Would you do it? I wouldn't. The money isn't there. That assumes an editing process that isn't streamlined and automated towards the singular goal of making previous editions obsolete and forcing students to always buy the most recent one. That's quite a conspiratorial stretch to think the authors do that. Think for a moment about what it would take to write a textbook that would be acceptable to a group of experts. You would be an expert in a very small part of the field. It would take you immense work and study to make sure you had the facts right on all of the parts for which you are not the world authority. That is really hard work. The three-year obsolescence plan is a publisher model, not an author model.
  - dave5104 14y ago
    If I were a professor who wrote a textbook based on a class I teach, of course I'd make it the textbook I use and make everyone buy a copy. Chances are that the textbook's material closely matches what I actually want to teach in the class. Why wouldn't I want to use my own path through the material? No other textbook is going to match identically or synthesize the material in my way.
    - dhimes 14y ago
      I agree. So you would sell, assuming it was an introductory-course textbook for a popular class (best-case scenario), what- a few hundred copies? And that's under the conditions above. My mechanics teacher wrote our textbook. We had about 10 people in our class. How much money do you think he made? Even if a few other schools adopted it (a VERY difficult task unless you work on your network of friends- which doesn't always go over well in academia), we're talking small money. He could consult a few hours a year for an aerospace company or something and make a lot more. That's my point.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Why not give the book away to students as part of their tuiton and earn your salary as a university professor?
      - nnnnnnnn 14y ago
        Because human beings generally have selfish interests. If you tell a person they may own and control a thing for profit, many will choose to do so. Unsurprisingly, this is a choice made by a large number of professors
ivan_ah 14y ago
> 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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    > 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).

cafard 14y ago

I can remember exactly two professors who had us use their books. One's was out of print, so we got photocopies for free.