Textbooks Now and Later
David W. Lewis
FACET
French Lick, Indiana
April 21, 2010
© 2010 David W. Lewis. Permission to use this work is granted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license (2.5). You are free: to copy, distribute, display, and
perform the work Under the following conditions: 1. You must attribute the work; 2. You may not use this work for commercial purposes, and 3. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this
work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived with permission of the copyright holder. Your fair use
and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Textbooks are broken
Lots of money is at stake
Disruption will happen
There are two issues — technology and
openness
5. Openness matters more
6. There are things faculty can do now
7. There is a path to the Future — David’s 3Part Plan
Rip-off 101: How The Current Practices Of The Textbook Industry Drive Up The Cost Of
College Textbooks, State PIRG’s Higher Education Project, February 2005. Available at:
http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education/affordable-textbooks
• Textbook prices are increasing at a fast rate.
• New textbook editions are costly and limit
the availability of used textbooks.
• Bundling drives up textbook costs.
• Textbook publishers charge American
students more than students overseas for the
same textbooks.
“The average four-year undergraduate spends
approximately $650 a year on textbooks. That’s less than
five percent of an average student’s total direct higher
education expenses.”
— textbookfacts.org
“According to Student Watch 2008, students estimate
spending approximately $702 a year on college textbooks.”
— nacs.org
“Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks—20
percent of tuition at an average university and half of tuition
at a community college.”
— Affordable Textbook Project U.S PIRG
IUB “Cost of Attendance” $812
IUPUI “Cost of Attendance” $672
Stephen E. Lucas
The Art of Public Speaking
McGraw-Hill
10th Edition 2008 paperback
978-0-07-730629-8
List Price: $117.75
% of List Price
Amazon : $91.21
Kindle edition: $80.00
Half.com unopened: $70.00
Amazon used: from $59.99
Chegg.com paper semester rental: $47.69
CourseSmart e-textbook 180 day rental: $40.88
77.5%
67.8%
59.9%
50.9%
40.5%
34.7%
9th Edition 2006
Amazon “new”: from $19.98
Half.com “like new”: from $8.09
17.0%
7.7%
• When a publisher provides a faculty member… information
regarding a college textbook or supplemental material, the
publisher shall include, with any such … the price… The copyright
dates of the three previous… [and] a description of the substantial
content revisions made between the current edition.
• A publisher that sells a college textbook and any supplemental
material accompanying such college textbook as a single bundle
shall also make available the college textbook and each
supplemental material as separate and unbundled items, each
separately priced.
• To the maximum extent practicable, each institution of higher
education receiving Federal financial assistance shall disclose on the
institution’s Internet course schedule… the International Standard
Book Number and retail price information of required and
recommended college textbooks…for each course listed in the
institution’s course schedule used for preregistration and
registration purposes
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100317/NEWS04/3170367/1001/NEWS/TNprofessors-fume-over-bill-banning-textbook-royalties
Retail spending on new college textbooks
last year (2008) was about $4.7 billion.
— textbookfacts.org
Where the New Textbook Dollar Goes
4.5%
11.7%
7.0%
Author Income
19.2%
Publisher Income
Publisher Costs
Store Costs
Store Income
57.6%
Where the New Textbook $4.7 Billion Goes
$211
Million
$550 Million
$329 Million
$902 Million
Author Income
Publisher Income
Publisher Costs
Store Costs
Store Income
$2.7 Billion
1. Students think the are paying to much
2. Students to everything they can to reduce
what they pay
3. Publishers hate what students are doing
4. Publishers especially hate the use book
market, so they do new editions frequently
5. Some students resort to piracy
6. Publishers sue students
7. Etc., Etc., Etc.
http://chronicle.com/article/Textbook-Publishers-Win-Cou/64342/
Issue 1: Print versus Digital
Issue 2: Open versus Proprietary
CourseSmart eTextbooks Online is our subscription service that enables a paying subscriber to have
access to and use of eTextbooks. As a paying subscriber, you are granted a personal, non-exclusive,
non-transferable, limited license to access the CourseSmart eTextbooks to which you subscribe, and
to reproduce and store portions of their contents for your personal, noncommercial use, all
according to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
Alternatively, a registered user may elect to download CourseSmart eTextbooks to one (1) personal
computer. As a registered user, you are granted a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited
license to access the CourseSmart eTextbooks that you download, and to reproduce and store
portions of their contents for your personal, noncommercial use, all according to the terms and
conditions of this Agreement
o view all content of any and all of the CourseSmart eTextbooks that you have
downloaded, until such downloads expire;
o print and/or copy and paste digital pages of the CourseSmart eTextbooks for your
personal, noncommercial use and reference in connection with your course work;
however, the number of pages that you may print is limited to 150% of the number of
pages in the eTextbook;
o personalize the CourseSmart experience by creating bookmarks and adding personal
notes; and
o purchase access codes to access online resources from certain third party websites; and
obtain a refund as long as you are eligible to receive a refund as described in our Refund
Policy.
25
20
15
10
5
0
2001
2002
2003
2004
% of students purchasing an eBook or digital version
of a textbook
— Student Monitor 2009
The National Association of College Stores
estimates that less than 3% of textbook sales today
are digital versions.
“I expected it to be a really useful tool that would enhance my
experience, but it has hindered my studies in a lot of different ways,”
Skolnick said. “I wasn’t able to absorb the material as well as if I had
hard copies of the readings, and I had to deal with a lot of technical
inconveniences just from the design of the Kindle.”
“I found it disappointing for use in class because I emphasize close
work with the text, and that ideally requires students to mark up the
text quite a bit,” Katz said. “Though it doesn’t prevent highlighting,
the annotation function is difficult to use, and the keyboard is very
small,” he added.
“If they improved it, I would be happy to try it [again],” Katz said. “In
principle, I very much like the idea.”
—”U. releases Kindle pilot data: After one term of use, the devices failed to
impress some students in pilot classes,” Daily Princetonian, February 22, 2010 at:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/02/22/25262/
Will Apple's iPad kill the textbook?
Almost every industry -- from travel
agencies to newspapers -- that has
moved to a digital model has seen its
profits decimated and some existing
participants bankrupted. Textbook
"publishers are aware that their current
model is doomed," says Peter S. Fader,
co-director of the Wharton Interactive
Media Initiative.
“E-textbooks: The New Best-sellers,”
Knowledge@Wharton March 3, 2010 at:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?arti
cleid=2437
Digital textbooks must meet three
criteria – affordable, printable and
accessible.
The first type of digital text we
reviewed was e-textbooks, the
digital book format offered by the
major publishers through
CourseSmart. We found that they
fall short on each of the three
criteria we found digital textbooks
must meet.
Nicole Allen, Course Correction: How Digital Textbooks Are Off Track and How to Set Them
Straight, The Student PIRGs, August 2008. at:
http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/newsroom.asp?id2=44596
HIGH TECH TEXTBOOKS: A SNAPSHOT OF ST
UDENT OPINIONS
1. Kindle, ereaders attractive, except for concerns abou
t cost.
2. iPod, iPhone textbooks would be convenien
t.
3. Print is still preferred over digital, but stud
ents like both.
4. The key is to create a marketplace.
Affordability depends on the cost of content
.
High Tech Textbooks: A Snapshot of Student
Opinions, The Student Public Interest Research Group, October 2009, at:
http://www.studentpirgs.org/uploads/2d/52/2d52a8880aec080771ff3faec1e35db5/hi
gh-tech-textbooks.pdf
2010 Horizon Report, at: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5810.pdf
Open Textbooks
1. Freely available on the Web, usually with
Print-on-demand
2. Free to rip, mix, and burn
“Frictionless remix”
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/1.0/organizational-behavior/28781
http://cnx.org
Great TED video by Richard Baraniuk on Connexions at:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html
What Faculty Can Do Now
1. Use alternative materials to replace
textbooks
2. Get textbook adoptions in early
3. Allow/encourage the use of older editions
$184.75
$35.00
My Plan:
1. As soon as possible create large-scale textbook
rental programs.
2. Establish metrics for textbook cost and goals for
their reduction.
3. Create an investment fund to allow faculty,
programs, and departments to acquire or create
alternative textbook content and related material.
Once a sufficient body of content is available the
investment fund could be repaid and refreshed
through a modest student fee.
A textbook rented through these programs
costs 30% to 40% of the list price.
This is what we can do quickly for current
students.
Total cost of textbooks = Sum for all courses
of the textbook cost in the course multiplied
by the number of students in the course.
Modest goal: 5% reduction each year for five
years
Ambitious Goal: 10% reduction each each of
the next five years. Total reduction of 50%
Investment Fund @ $200 per student.
Develop or purchase content.
After two years $50 per student textbook fee,
after four years up fee to $100.
University becomes institutionally involved
Investment Fund used to:
1. Commission content (pay faculty)
2. Purchase commercial content
3. Support infrastructure
Best if done collaboratively, institutional
groups (CIC) or disciplinary societies
1.
2.
3.
4.
Textbooks are broken
Much money is at stake
Disruption will happen
There are two issues — technology and
openness
5. Openness matters more
6. There are things faculty can do now
7. There is a path to the Future — David’s 3part plan
Questions or
Comments
David W. Lewis
dlewis@iupui.edu
© 2010 David W. Lewis. Permission to use this work is granted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license (2.5). You are free: to copy, distribute, display, and
perform the work Under the following conditions: 1. You must attribute the work; 2. You may not use this work for commercial purposes, and 3. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this
work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived with permission of the copyright holder. Your fair use
and other rights are in no way affected by the above.