I propose an alternative: after some number of years of teaching, professors get a year off to write textbooks; these books are then distributed under a creati

I propose an alternative: after some number of years of teaching, professors get a year off to write textbooks; these books are then distributed under a creative commons license, with university libraries acting as archives and hosts for textbooks. Encourage students to share their books with others. We do not need the textbook publishing industry in this day and age. They have outlived their usefulness: we can distribute books without them. When their idea of a "new edition" is to change the problem sets, when their idea of an electronic edition is "something you cannot read past the end of the year," we do not benefit in any way from their existence. We are not talking about entertainment here, we are talking about an important medium for preserving and propagating human knowledge -- the very thing that has led to the overwhelming success of human civilization.