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Comment by njarboe | Hacker News Reader

Since at least some university professors should be able to write a good textbook on the subject they teach, the university should give them a semester or two off of teaching classes to write one, give the professor a little royalty ($1/book?), and then publish and sell the book at cost. $15 to $30 per book. Then don't change it until necessary (calculus could be the exact same book for decades) so that even cheaper used books are plentiful. Many universities even already run their own publishing houses.

I'm not sure where the friction is that prevents this from happening? University presidents like to have fancy dinners with textbook publishing house CEOs?

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That's good in theory, but what currently happens is a professor takes a fully paid sabbatical and writes the book for a publishing company. That company sells the book to students for $300 a copy and pays the professor $50 a copy (with a possible sizable amount up front). The professor and friends of the professor requires it for their classes.

The friction that prevents your plan from happening is that the professors won't do it for so cheap. There is a ton of money they can make under the current system.

Can the University press offer a similar deal to their employee/professor, undercut the commercial publisher, save the student money and still profit?

It's possible but what happens often now is the professor is getting paid twice. Paid sabbatical and bonus money for the book. If the University was doing it, they wouldn't pay a person twice for one job. At least that's how my university would view it. Also, I'm not sure if a professor gets much credit from the University toward tenure for writing a book. Because of this, if there is no money involved, I doubt many professor's would do it. They do it for the money only right now.

One professor I work with has produced a textbook for a class she teaches [1] and it is only $60. Some professors are interested in the subject they teach and research. Having a good textbook for your students that you control the content of is great. She produced it in LaTeX and keeps an updated version online. Professors give away their publications to journals all the time so I don't think them holding out for a big paycheck is the reason books don't get produced.

[1] https://www.ucpress.edu/ebook.php?isbn=9780520946378

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