R. Preston McAfee, a Cal Tech economics professor, is annoyed at how overpriced textbooks are. “‘The person who pays for the book, the parent or the student, doesn’t choose it,’ he said. ‘There is this sort of creep. It’s always O.K. to add $5.’” To fight back, he’s foregone the potential six-figure advance traditional publishing would have granted, and published his textbook online for free.
You can also buy print versions through Lulu and Flat World Knowledge for anywhere from $11 to $60, but it’s free to download in Word and PDF formats. 
(Note: unless you plan on downloading it, you may want to skip the link to avoid wasting the professor’s bandwidth—here’s a screencap of the otherwise unremarkable page for the curious.) The New York Time says that it’s not a widely used text yet, but Harvard is among the colleges using it.
The article also takes a look at Connexions, an open source textbook project that allows users to mix and match existing content according to CC licenses and sees 850,000 unique users a month.
And then there’s CourseSmart, an online service backed by five dead tree publishers that sells limited access to printed textbooks for a discount of up to 50% over the print version. We haven’t tried CourseSmart ourselves, but the Times’ description of it makes it sound like a deliberately constrained “service” dreamed up by companies that don’t want to hurt their $200-a-copy golden goose, but want to take advantage of the market they created in the first place when they priced their books so high. Which, okay, sounds like good business, but we still think they suck.
“Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free “ [New York Times]
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The cost of publishing a texbook has dropped by a huge margin. In 1994 we were publishing textbooks for 50% of the inflation adjusted cost of publishing a textbook in 1984. With productivity increases from better software/computers, I have little doubt that has dropped further. The argument from the publishers that it takes a lot of time and cost to do all those photos etc just does not hold water.
The reason textbooks have increased at 3 or 4 times the rate of inflation is publishers are now sending out hundreds (sometimes thousands) of “free” evaluation copies, usually unsolicited. On top of that, they bundle them with numerous, sometimes dozens of teaching aids that often accompany the free copies. The vast majority of the free copies and almost all of the free teaching aids are never used, but you pay for them all the same.
Awesome.
Hi. I work in the textbook publishing industry for one of the big publishers. My area is social sciences/humanities.
1. I’ve never heard of authors getting six-figure advances on textbooks. Maybe in the hard sciences, but not here. The norm is more like very low five figures. Remember that advances must be earned out by sales. It is not free money. If you don’t earn back your advance, your publisher is unhappy, and you might not get to do another edition.
2. Of course a professor who writes his/her own textbook is going to use it. Often, the professor has a particular way he/she wants the information presented. That is one of the reasons to write a textbook. Ethical professors do not keep what they earn from these classes. The one I know gives the money back to the school.
3. Part of the feature creep of textbooks is due to students who want bling (pix, color, figures, etc.) and who will not read something that looks like an instruction manual and profs/TAs/etc who want “a course in a box.” They want the PowerPoints, instructor’s manual, student study guide, test bank, and any other supplements done for them. This is due, in part, to very large classes in the intro market. Some publishers are sending some of this supplemental material to the web now.
4. It’s difficult for non-tenured profs to write free stuff. At many colleges, profs have to publish to keep their jobs. Publishing free textbooks online doesn’t count. No publishing = no contract. McAfee is probably secure in his job; therefore, he does not have to worry about publishing and can spend his time writing an online textbook.
5. Some textbooks require new editions; some don’t. Here’s a tip: the ones in the higher editions (say, 11th ed.) typically have fewer changes. The book has been around so long, it’s as good as it can be. Books entering 2nd and 3rd editions will probably be substantially improved.
6. I know I will be flamed for this, but I must point out that writing textbooks is work. Producing a 1st ed., is especially hard work. A lot of people are involved who must be paid. The intro I’m working on now requires the coordination of 20 or more people just to get the thing into print. McAfee’s text looks great. A *lot* of work went into that. He’s also the “J. Stanley Johnson Professor of Business, Economics & Management” which sounds like an endowed chair to me. Endowed chairs, to my knowledge, make huge $$$, far more than regular faculty since they are paid through a private endowment. He is also a business professor, and they command higher premiums than most because universities must pay them more to keep them (else they would go to private enterprise and make even more $$$). So Dr. McAfee is already making scads of dough, just not through publishing. He has the luxury of collecting a huge salary, then producing a textbook on the side for his “war against the publishers.”
McAfee also appears to be a Yahoo VP (see [vita.mcafee.cc]), among other things, so his earnings come from elsewhere in our pockets, just not the part allotted for textbooks. McAfee is not some academic warrior in the trenches martyring his publishing time to help impoverished students. He is wealthy, and as one who appears to earn much of his living from new media, has a point to make. I suspect his textbook is not strictly charity. However, he did donate some of his time to provide econ students with a quality free book, so good on him. However, don’t expect many such books from not-so-wealthy professors who depend on publishing to augment their salaries or vitae.
Finally, generally, author royalties on textbooks are relatively inconsequential. Really, they’re tiny compared to what the publisher rakes in. (McAfee would laugh at the chicken feed authors make. He spends that much on his light bill.) In fact, what a text author makes is hardly worth writing the book unless the book is widely adopted. The author then might make a few bucks by the 6th or 7th ed. But profs who write textbooks are not lighting cigars with your student dollars.
MacAfee might be with what he pulls down from Yahoo, though. (I kid.)
WOW-10 paragraphs.I can see that you are from the text BOOK industry.
Reguardless of his motives or situation the fact is that he did it,put his name to it and the other print media is telling us about it.
I agree that many students WANT bells and whistles-but I don’t think that is important to them once they realize the costs.
The original article said it best in the paragraph about coursesmart but can be used for publishers or even the education industry itself-’take advantage of the market they helped create’