Peter Atkins on writing textbooks

Seriously.

"Please rearrange the world to suit my business model"

Throughout four years of university, I made it a habit to always visit the first class of any course I had taken the previous semester (even to the detriment of missing one of my courses) and pawning off my textbook at around 80% of List (Commons book store was around 65-70%). about 10-15% of the time I would get stuck with a book when the course required a new revision. I'd say about 30% of the time the new revision was just a scam to drive new revenue, 50% of the time it was minor touchups of some substance, and maybe 20% (at most) it was significant new material.

The reality, is that with very, very few exceptions, the textbooks that were recommended weren't that books that I wanted to hold onto for life.

(Exception like Radia Perlman's Interconnections, Stewart's Calculus Series, did find a permanent home with me - maybe a dozen books- but they were exceptions. Most of the great books for life I purchased as a result of my own searches.)

What I would love to do, in hindsight, is go back and talk to my professors and ask, _why_ on earth had they recommended books that were basically begging to be sold off to the next party as quickly as possible?

In a few cases the answer was obvious (textbook written by the professor. :-) - but in most cases it was like they chose the book at random because it was basically, acceptable, if not excellent.

Of course, with things like khanacademy, wikipedia, and other reference materials, Textbooks are slowly starting to lose their premiere place in the world. It will be interesting to see if that is another market place that will eventually yield to an "information wants to be free" meme.