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.Textbooks are broken 2.Lots of money is at stake 3.Disruption will happen 4.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 3- Part 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 Available at:

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

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: $ th Edition 2006 Amazon “new”: from $19.98 Half.com “like new”: from $8.09 % of List Price 77.5% 67.8% 59.9% 50.9% 40.5% 34.7% 17.0% 7.7% Stephen E. Lucas The Art of Public Speaking McGraw-Hill 10 th Edition 2008 paperback

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

professors-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 11.7% 7.0% 57.6% 19.2% 4.5%

Where the New Textbook $4.7 Billion Goes $550 Million $329 Million $2.7 Billion $902 Million $211 Million

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.

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.

% 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:

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,” March 3, 2010 at: 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 at:

HIGH TECH TEXTBOOKS: A SNAPSHOT OF ST UDENT OPINIONS 1.Kindle, e- readers 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: gh-tech-textbooks.pdf

2010 Horizon Report, at:

Open Textbooks 1.Freely available on the Web, usually with Print-on-demand 2.Free to rip, mix, and burn “Frictionless remix”

Great TED video by Richard Baraniuk on Connexions at:

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 $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.Textbooks are broken 2.Much money is at stake 3.Disruption will happen 4.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 3- part plan

Questions or Comments David W. Lewis © 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.