Nicole, you really need to spend some time learning what goes into a textbook to speak knowledgeably on the subject. At the very least, your “make textbooks affordable” website wouldn’t read like The Onion.

The development costs of a textbook can run up to a million dollars. Permissions, art, layout, editing, and proofreading cost a fortune. Not to mention marketing costs and the used book factor.

And it isn’t about “what students want.” If you want complete control, homeschool yourself. Texts are adopted (ideally) because faculty feel they’re best for their course, and because the ancillary materials (huge development costs that students don’t see) make their job easier and more productive. If you are required to buy a book and never use it, that’s the instructor’s fault, not the publisher’s. Take it up with him or her.

Finally, just who is supposed to write all these “free” books? My books (I’m published with two of the majors) took me about 3,000 hours each to write, and that doesn’t include the hours my art people put in. I should give that away because you don’t want to pay for your books? Fine -are you offering anything in return? I don’t see it on your Onion page, just bullet points on how students should pester their professors to “sign a statement.” Why don’t you suggest something more useful -e.g., said students can clean the houses or mow the lawns of the faculty they want to provide them with free books. Just a thought.

Your point about faculty using this method for ages might be true although i am not sure if thats true, but even that doesn’t justify the normative stance we should have on that, which is to keep the middle man out of the picture which in this case are publishers. Marketing, advertising, making money out of ‘free books’ might be a distraction to copyrights but in essence it would only serve as a ’storm in the team cup’ in whole copyright/left debate.

Also why shouldn’t physical formats be given for free? whats the harm? if there is a digital format, why shouldn’t people print it out themselves or lets suppose some NPO or NGO does that. About the blind people, now they should pay for the audio book? why on earth? They could use JAWS, use other text-to-speech book transcription or other methods but why should it be up for grabs for publishers or profiteers?

I share the feeling with Downes ‘from where i sit’, its really going to torpedo the whole project if theres one. It looks more like a large scale enterprise level, strategy driven multinational’s marketing plan for the new buzz word ‘open textbooks’ they could exploit.

I have been a great fan of your papers, open course, projects and blog but it really escapes me where are you heading with this bill. I am trying to understand the larger picture if there is one that has made you say things like you’ve said above. Help me on that David.

Right now *every* student feels the pain of denied access to their course materials (an intro calc book costs $200!).

More use of open textbooks would change the dynamics of the market so that students would actually have a choice of what, if anything, to purchase. Publishers would have to offer products students want at prices students pay, or else they wouldn’t make money.

In that case, *every* student would be better off than they are now. At least students would be forced to purchase a $20-30 book rather than a $200 book….

College stores are often confronted with a dual mission. On the one hand, the college store’s reason d’etre is to provide students with the materials they need to be successful and do so at the lowest possible cost so that those materials are affordable/accessible to the greatest number of students. On the other hand, college stores are expected to provide a return to their institution, which often goes to financial aid and student services — making higher education in general more accessible to all.

Balancing these dual missions is a difficult task. Many stores would likely embrace open textbooks if there was an option that allows them to continue fulfilling both options — a lower cost textbook for students, yet some continued return to the institution — enabling improved accessibility to education for a wider audience. Selling these shifts among missions to administrators can also be difficult for stores.

A faculty member at one conference I was at earlier this spring reported moving to an open source textbook, free for students, for a very large course adoption. They indicated that the result was a large shortfall in revenue going back to the financial aid budget for the next semester — meaning that there were fewer institutional financial aid resources available to make the institution more affordable to attend. (The shortfall from the faculty member’s decision was reported back to the faculty member by the chancellor).

So in a pragmatic world, where free does not necessarily improve accessibility to all, and may, in fact reduce some accessibility or produce inequities, is there a “low cost” option that could be used to balance the inequities Stephen refers to, while still achieving the goal of lower course material costs for all? I worry that people will see open source as a silver bullet and miss the unintended consequences to overall educational affordability, or the inequalities in affordability that may result.

This is a straw man, David. My argument is that if you require a letter of suipport from publishers, then publishers will immediately turn this into a cartel, which would mean that prices would not drop at all. You do not address this line of reasoning at all.

> I believe these concerns can be worked around with the language and requirements of the legislation / RFP.

You mean, the way it has been in other legislation and RFP processes? Seriously, there is enough room for scepticism here to drive a truck through.

> I don’t understand this comment. Is this an argument against providing free access to online versions of open textbooks?

There is a whole line of my reasoning that you simply don’t get – it comes up a lot in our discussions. I doubt that any number of comments to posts is going to explain it, because (from where I sit) it appears that its a matter of you simply not _seeing_ some of the things that I see. In other words, it’s a perceptual issue, not an issue of reason or rationale.

I don’t think I can explain it; I have to show it to you. I was poor for most of my life – I need to be able to show you somehow that the property of being poor is the result of economic systems designed to _prevent access_ to essential goods. being poor, you _have_ to pay for them — once you’re richer, you have more options, any many of these things become cheaper or even free.

Go to a grocery store in the inner city and then go directly to the same brand grocery store in the suburbs. The inner city store is not only smaller and dirtier, it has fewer choices and they are more expensive. The suburban store is larger, nicer, and cheaper.

Why? Because the poor lack mobility. They have to take what they’re offered, even if it’s more expensive. While the rich can drive around and pick and choose, so they can get better and cheaper alternatives.

What happens is that the prices the poor are paying actually end up subsidizing the rich.

If you haven’t _seen_ this, you can work yourself into a state of denial that this sort of structure can exist in an economy. Much less understand that it is absolutely _fundamental_ to the economy.

Markets are based on *denying* *access*. It is easier to deny access to poor people, because they have no rights. If you are not even willing to SEE this, then you cannot engage in a discussion of how it is happening in the current case.