Consumer group: Publish textbooks entirely online
“The Public Interest Research Group goes further, recommending that new books and new editions should be published entirely online to save on printing costs.” – The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The TeleRead take: Triggering these sentiments is a rise in student spending on textbooks. The National Association of College Stores says it rocketed from $619 in the 99-2000 school year to $807 in 2002-2003–or 30 percent in just three years. As reported in the PI:
The Public Interest Research Group, a national consumer and government watchdog organization, pins much of the blame for the high cost of books on publishers “producing new editions like clockwork” and “including expensive bells and whistles, such as CD-ROMs, that professors rarely find useful.”The research group’s California and Oregon chapters surveyed 156 faculty members and 521 students at 10 colleges in those states…
Tom Engel, a [University of Washington] chemistry professor who has led his department’s textbook-selection process, said a new edition every five years would be plenty.
“In my bookshelf in front of me, I see books in the seventh and eighth editions,” he said. “Hardly any of the changes they have made led to a substantial improvement in the book.”
Some professors say students can be spared some of the financial burden if new information for a book is posted on the Web or published separately as a low-cost update. Other critics say publishers need to create “no-frills” books that stick to the core subject matter and leave out the full-color illustrations and other options.
The Public Interest Research Group goes further, recommending that new books and new editions should be published entirely online to save on printing costs.
I myself love e-books but would hate to see the above scenario applied to all textbooks until tablet technology is cheaper and better. Some texts woud work out fine on PDAs right now. But at least some may be too complex visually even without the frills, and I’d rather not see students forced to read off desktop machines, which aren’t as comfortable to work with hour after hour. Needless to say, a coordinated TeleRead-style approach at the national level could expand the market by encouraging the production of low-cost tablet machines for students in K-12, not just higher education.
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