Textbook creators’ rights

5 comments on “Textbook creators’ rights”

1. richard says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

   As someone who teaches at university – yeah, I’m definitely ok with this. The authors of these textbooks make surprisingly little money from them anyway; their primary value for the vast majority of these writers is in promoting their chances at tenure, or at least building some career longevity.

   Academic books are similar, except that they’re screwing the university libraries rather than the students: Ashgate, for example, puts out some really interesting books, but their editing standards are not always reliable, and you can’t buy a book for less than $100 except during their rare sales. The authors of these books make zip, usually – it’s all about maximizing profit.

2. Degen says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

   Or, we could promote a new way of publishing for the academic market without first excusing material theft.

   This is getting tired. Or I am.

   I am not an expert on the science of academic pricepoints or the profit margins therein, but from the sounds of things, neither is the writer of this article. If a business gouges customers, then they should be publicly called on the gouging. Why though is it suddenly socially acceptable to go beyond criticism and promote behaviours that are and should be against the law.

   As a professor, if you believe your students are being unfairly treated, surely you can suggest options other than either passively buying the book or stealing it.

   Come on.

3. Chris says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

   I don’t know how this works for other disciplines, but I’ll repeat what I said back in one of the Urquhart Penguin Anthology threads: in the humanities the great bulk of the cost of anthologies of readings in textbooks comes from – ta da – paying copyright fees.

   Academic publishing is a sick animal, and kicking it right now for gouging is a bit naïve, especially if you’re on the side of authors getting paid for their work in the previous thread (not since the old site’s poetry threads…). Reprint rights for a story in an anthology can double the income some authors will see for that work and give them access to a young, malleable audience of potential future readers. Yes, there’s a profit motive behind the rising prices, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not also true that second users and piracy drive price increases as publishers look to justify the gobs of money tied up in producing and distributing a textbook. Yes, those dubious “xxth edition! Now with less mercury!” repackaging efforts attempt to prevent students buying used books, but caveat emptor et magister. Professors and students should be able to recognize when a new edition will have no effect on their courses and act accordingly. In fact, some publishers may even contribute to the sale of used course text by providing the professor with a conversion of his or her course notes from an old edition to the new; the prof. should be able to work in both editons with little difficulty.

   More to the point, though, I fear the black hole we might create by embracing technology. Piracy is parasitic: kill the host and you kill the parasites too. The one thing large texbook publishers have is the infrastructure necessary for the enterprise. No one wants to pay for infrastructure, and the time may well come, if we encourage piracy, where the publishers won’t be willing to pay for it either. I’ll bet all of my Norton Anthologies that thepiratebay.org and TextbookTorrent cease to exist shortly thereafter. And then?

4. Matt S. says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

   This issue really seems to vary from discipline to discipline. In English, I would say that textbooks are reasonably priced, and that there’s no real rush to replace anthologies any quicker than once every few years or so. Indeed, the only real thing that ever gets updated is the critical apparatus, and many profs don’t even use that. Looking around the average English class, you’re bound to see at least a dozen different editions of whatever text the class happens to be reading (providing it’s in the public domain–newer ones not so much), and many of them have those bright “used” stickers that university bookstores love to apply. Doesn’t seem to be that big an issue there.

   In the sciences, on the other hand, I hear that things can get pretty crazy. When I took my Biology requirement, the prof mentioned that she was going to teach from the earlier edition of the textbook since the new one not only simply shuffled the page numbers around, but it also introduced errors (no doubt they will have been corrected in subsequent editions). Other tricks include selling electronic access to the answers for problem sets (even if you buy it used, you have to subscribe to the site). While I don’t deny the right of publishers to make a profit, the problem I see here is that all of their methods come across as so sleazy.

   If publishers want kids to pay for their books, they have to know that they’re getting their value out of them, and that they’re not just pawns in some game of profits and bottom lines. When you hear of textbooks going out of date from one semester to the next (a shelf-life shorter than salad dressing), it’s hard to believe that the publishers are acting in good faith. While I don’t doubt that there are students who feel that they deserve everything for free, I think there are many who feel that their education is merely an afterthought in the rush to profit. I realise that I’m not exactly offering any solutions here, but it seems to me that any potential solution would have to start with a show of good faith to the students who keep textbook publishers in business.

5. Matt S. says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

   Also:

   “As a professor, if you believe your students are being unfairly treated, surely you can suggest options other than either passively buying the book or stealing it.”–Degen

   You’ll be pleased to know that some profs do. I had a prof who picked texts that were available in Dover Thrift Editions (I think I paid $3 for Dubliners), developed course-packs that contained only the theory needed for the class (meaning that the writers got paid and the students got a slim packet of photocopies of only the relevant works), and only assigned anthologies if we were going to be using a significant portion of their contents.

   Unfortunately, not everyone is this kind. It takes a fair bit of work and planning to develop a course that works well with this type of reading list, which isn’t always doable for young profs who are trying to publish enough articles to gain tenure, and who might not always be familiar with the wide variety of anthologies available, leading them to pick the ones they’re familiar with (or the ones by publishers who offer them the most free sushi when they come to push textbooks–that’s probably where all of the money’s going, come to think of it). How I wish that all profs could run classes as well as the one I mentioned above. Sadly, however, part of the blame is rightfully assigned to those who don’t.

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