4 ms·
It seems to me that the obvious way to fix college textbooks is for professors to create new electronic versions -- alone or collaboratively, free or non-free -
by podperson 14y ago
It seems to me that the obvious way to fix college textbooks is for professors to create new electronic versions -- alone or collaboratively, free or non-free -- and let the market decide. What's clearly broken here is the "buy this and we'll make it out-of-date or hook it to a one-use set of online tools" model.
- okhudeira 14y agoThe linear algebra course I took used a free book (I believe it was http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/ http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/) which students could buy for cost of binding or freely download. As long as book publishers are involved with universities and professors, there will be a problem.
- podperson 14y agoCertainly the current corrupt system of publishers who give free samples blah blah blah is totally screwed up. But there's certainly room for a "thin" publishing layer like iBooks, Lulu, Nook, KDP, etc. where the only thing the "publisher" does is free the authors from dealing with the nuts and bolts of ecommerce.