First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry. | Hacker News Reader

First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.

nytimes.com

42 pointsmarkbao50 comments

Some great comments here, but I gotta jump off track for a second.

I kind of want to know who or what the lead was for this article. No way the NY Times just goes through TPB looking for the most piquant torrent and write a tilted article about it. Seriously....revenge?

College students are frugal people. Between work and school it's not easy making a living to put food in your belly and pay the costs of student housing month after month. They want to save money, books cost astronomically more to purchase than they do to produce, and this columnist reduces all of this down to "revenge"?

I've got to admit, this is one tilted article if I've ever read one; quotes from publishing companies, none from TPB who if this writer had done PROPER research instead of stating oversimplifications would have seen are happy to talk with the press rather candidly about their operations.

No quotes from students, no quotes from TPB directly about the issues, and Randall Stross has the capacity to call this whole thing "revenge"? The best mention of TPB was on user statistics, what the eff

Pardon my language, but for the NyTimes, this is bullshit.

It's a nice start, but this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. This will be a difficult problem with certain majors.

I've taken several economics classes, and you have to purchase a new book for the semester in order to get a key card inside of the book. This will let you activate an online account, which will open up Flash-based homework. This is all linked into the school's grading system. Many classes _require_ the student to go through this registration process, or you could be dropped from the class entirely.

And economics is just one example. I had the same setup in several business, psychology, and engineering classes.

I'm sure this may work for some of the books, but I wouldn't really look at this as the end of expensive textbooks.

Keycard? Seriously?

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Here we come.

Most teachers side with the students when it comes to books costing an outrageous amount. So most of them avoid feeding publisher's pocket books. i.e. When I was in college most teachers just uploaded copies of homework problems on blackboard, and never used any of that published based info. + all of the problems were based on material discussed in class, so you never had to buy the book in the first place.

There are obvious exceptions, usually when the teacher is the one who wrote the book, and wants to profit off his students. i.e. I had one class where the guy had us buy 3 books, 2 of which we never even used. Surprise, surprise they all had the teacher's name on the cover.

When I went to college (2005 grad), almost all my textbooks were optional. A couple friends and I usually pooled our money and bought one to share, which was great for Midterms/Finals, since we studied together anyway. The books I actually kept were things like SICP, which were cheaper to begin with.

I wonder at what point the online editions of these books become so detailed that they compete with the University course itself. A lot of them already do all the grunt work for the Professor (giving quizzes/hw and grading them). All you have to do at that point is get accredited and make some kind of exam system and you have a substitute for the actual class.

$209 seems awfully pricey for a book, but not too bad for an intro course in Biology. And frankly, your intro courses are ripe to be taken over the net, because they are already given in anonymous lecture halls with 1000 people in them.

Imagine some student showing up in the Dean's office with her transcript from Prentice Hall, showing off her 4.0 in online courses and ready to dive into her major as a Junior.

I'm looking into transferring to a university to finish my BSc in computer science (dropped out of HS, went to a community college), and all the ones I've looked into usually had some sort of cap on the number and type of online classes you were allowed to take. Unfortunately. I would not mind taking nothing but online classes for most intro classes where hands-on stuff was either not necessary (like..CS?) or where you only had to actually show up to class for a lab (like chem, bio, anatomy..).

That being said, I took online classes because it let me slack off and then still get an A in the class, but it actually took more effort to get the A because of the extra work to prove I wasn't just showing up to take exams. But the timing was more convenient for me. Sooo..

I remember that from an economics class. That is definitely a way of adapting the model to prevent piracy -- kind of like how desktop software is easy to pirate, but SaaS isn't. The electronic component needs to be actually useful to be adopted by teachers. I've bought other books with some kind of electronic component (chemistry, physics), but I never scratched off the keycode to maintain the resale value of the book. Economics is the only class I've had where the software component was required to complete the homework. Damn capitalists.

The biggest barrier to book piracy being useful is new editions. Often older editions (and older solutions manuals!) are available online, but in engineering, at least, they change the order of the problems to deprecate the old editions.

I've had that happen with econ, math and some other classes...and usually instead of buying the book to get the code you had the option of just paying for the online access. Like, the book would be $90 with the code, but the code itself would be $20 you can pay with a credit card (i.e. if you bought the book used for, say, $40, and you wanted just the online access).

I actually haven't had a class where the book was the only way you could get access to that.

Create an account at gigapedia.org and you'll see the extent of books available online for free. It's amazing. It's become my new Amazon for checking out new stuff that I'm not sure if I want to buy.

(All yee free market crusaders, don't worry -- I still have a regular truckload of books coming my way from Amazon -- as much as my budget allows.)

How unfortunate that my budget can swallow much less than my brain!

its the fate, what we need is to just go with it. it will carry you the way it wants as we have a saying in sanskrit "vidi likithalekani parimastrum na shakyathe

for free book reading to get a idea about, then it makes sure to buy.

its very useful to students

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i want to create account

it's good idea to help the others like that. if someone downloads a book from time to time will not affect the Amazon budget. Thank you very much dear friend.

its good help for many students around the world.

Don't forget to search emule, very obscure media is where emule excels. Also, remember to share with the entire class! :)

If you're feeling lazy and don't want to install anything, you can also find websites with links to filesharing sites. They have the same kind of defense as a torrent tracker in that they don't actually host files, they just have links. They frequently feature highend technical books from Springer Verlag, Elsevier, et al.

We're through the looking glass here, people.

A closed online site for sharing textbooks would really take off. The PRQ has been unstoppable so far. It can't really be stopped.

It did, and met its fate.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-campus-copyrig...

When will pirates learn that you need to host in a secure country?

having just graduated myself, this is really not surprising. its also not really that new of a concept -- after dealing with one semester of college book prices (which cost my friends and i 400 to 600 dollars each) many people started pirating books. there was a copy store down the street who would copy entire textbooks for $20. there was also the student who bought the books for the largest classes, took the pages apart from the binding, scanned them with an auto-feeder, and sold e-copies for $1 each which could be printed free of charge at the university's library. to me this just sends another signal that it is time for these stagnant industries to adapt to the times, and become more innovative with production and distribution of their materials. they also need to realize that college students won't accept being taken advantage of with ridiculously marked up prices - so they can either change and benefit or be left behind with nothing.

For intro books for self study, I recommend Dover publications - around 12 dollars a book.

I'd like a new model for academic publishing. Normally, two of the most important roles of a publisher are quality control (hopefully), and marketing. In academics, mechanisms are probably already in place to take care of both of these functions. In any case, distribution should no longer be an important part of the services a publisher provides. For academic publishing, then, the most important function of a publisher may be to provide the actual physical form of the book.

This is the new model: let the authors compete on the quality of their content, and let the publishers compete on the physical quality and price of the books they publish. Let the authors keep the rights to the books, but let them then allow many different publishers to compete with different form factors and prices for the books. Maybe then we would get much lower prices for higher quality physical books.

This is why book publishers are so excited about textbooks being distributed on the Kindle (or similar device). It virtually eliminates the used book market. Of course, if the book is just static content, it's much easier to pirate in electronic form than paper form.

I'm not sure if this applies to all majors, but one great thing about Math/CS at Waterloo was that the majority of reading material used was written by profs there. The little math dept. printing office latex/dvips/lpr'd and spiral bound it, and you just paid the cost of reproduction (more or less).

That's (yikes!) 10 years ago now, but I hope it hasn't changed.

My community college chooses books that cost $15-$20, it was nice. Then at the University levels they hit me with $200 books. As for new editions, I understand that Biology changes frequently, and the books might need to be changed periodically, but classes like Calc I shouldn't be updated every other year.

Unless you're in pretty advanced bio classes, it doesn't change every year like the textbook editions suggest.

Also I have had community college classes where the text cost upwards of $200. I've also had classes where the used book cost $5 and the prof was willing to buy it herself if you couldn't afford even $5...

The material doesn't change, but the homework problems do...or at least the order of homework problems/chapters may change.

But the material isn't changing, which then begs the question as to why the hell the professors and teachers believe that using a brand new edition is a good idea. That's the key point. Homework problems don't need to be changed, unless you're worried about people cheating from folks who've taken the class before - in which case, change the exams, and change which homework problems are being assigned. Even then it's their loss/problem if they decide to cheat. And it's not that the problems were incorrectly written - corrections are usually minimal - it's that if the problems change, what happens is that it's fundamentally the same question except numbered differently.

I've seen this happen so many times and I'm sick of it because the likes of all my intro classes from chem and physics and bio to calc and CS have not fundamentally changed SO much that it is impossible to use a text that is a couple years old.

I completely agree with you: it's a scam.

But we, the profs, don't have a lot of choice in the matter. Problem 1: we need to assign a text which is available to all students, and I can't guarantee availability of enough copies of the old editions.

I'd love to use this book (http://store.doverpublications.com/0486457710.html) costing $20 for calc, but that brings up problem 2: I have to use the book the department assigns. Changing this would require joining a curriculum committee, turf wars, academic politics, etc. Yuck, I'm a scientist, not a politician.

I usually work with my students to save them some money (copy problem pages, etc), and I bought old editions when I was an undergrad. But that's about the best I can do. I have given the problem some thought, and have a startup concept (with some code). If I can overcome some technical issues, I'll go live with it.

With problem 1, wouldn't the old edition still be cheaper than the new? Or would the publisher just stop publishing the older edition? Even with new editions I've come across situations where the bookstore was having an impossible time ordering enough to meet demand.

And the second...I just guess I don't understand why new editions have to be adopted so quickly sometimes. I taught myself all sorts of subjects out of used books I got at garage and library sales. Years later actually taking the classes with a brand new edition of a text, nothing's changed. Only the price..used books would be dirt cheap and the new edition would be $120. So the department assigns a book, why do they have to assign it? Kickbacks from the publisher? My question above about the publisher discontinuing the older edition?

I guess I'm ultimately mad about this whole situation (and yes, I was a textbook torrents user although they never had the texts for my classes). I even had one class at a CC (I think it was anatomy) where the class itself was only somewhere around $70 but the materials and mainly the text|online access|workbook were in the $300 range. I about flipped out then.

The publisher indeed stops publishing the old version. It would be cheaper for the students that can find an old copy, who knows if they will all be able to do so?

>So the department assigns a book, why do they have to assign it?

Do you want to buy a new book for calc 2 if you take it with somebody besides me? Or buy a new book if you switch sections?

Standardization makes sense, especially at the intro level. I'd prefer if they standardized on cheap calc books, but as I said, making that occur involves academic politics. Perhaps one day, when I've got clout...

Hmm, okay, now I'm hating them more and more.

>Do you want to buy a new book for calc 2 if you take it with somebody besides me? Or buy a new book if you switch sections?

Well, my idea was to standardize on cheaper books, not that it should be a free-for-all (for your reason precisely). It does involve academic politics and you'd run into the problem with having a lack of books in some cases. This sucks on all sides.

>And the second...

Several times in my experience the only difference between editions was that the publisher had changed the work problem (and maybe fixed some typos) for the sole purpose of making the students buy new books.

Right, that's what we're saying. Nothing fundamentally huge changes in most of these editions, so the students keep getting ripped off as they need to buy new editions and old editions become harder to sell.

I wonder what would happen if lots of students and faculty members from all over grouped together to refuse to buy such editions? In my dreams, but just to make a point to the publishers. I can only imagine how much of the cost of a new textbook is pure profit for the publishers and authors.

I'm taking Calc I at my community college right now to get it out of the way instead of taking it next semester. The textbook costs $110, used. I cant remember how much it would have been if it was new. Probably around $150.

Then on the flip side, I've got a class next semester that has 4-5 books required that cost a total of $50. So it's not dead set "Community == cheap, University == expensive" Its closer to "((University || Community) == expensive)" :\

Useful tip: depending on your major, buying international editions of books from, e.g., http://firstandsecond.com/ can save you literally thousands of dollars over a 4-year program. Subject to local laws and regulations, yada yada.

I recommend open sourced textbooks. They are often of a much higher quality, they are written by people who have a true passion for the subject, and most of all they are free.

Check out textbookrevolution.org.

I hope the publishers eventually embrace digital downloads, but DRM sucks and they're never going to go for non-DRM because of the obvious reasons. I bought a digital download of a textbook once (it seemed like a good idea at the time), and it took me hours to slowly print the book to .pdf because there were enforced delays to slow down the process.

Is the existing level of pricing justified at all ? I mean a $209 book does sound like it carries a huge margin.

The problem is that the average textbook sells a small run of copies, and doesn't benefit from economies of scale. Unfortunately, it seems that the professors and the publishers both like the current system, and the students have very little influence on the process.

There are some solutions, but the incentives don't seem to be in place to encourage them. The best seems to be reducing the overall number of textbooks, allowing each one to have a larger run and thus to better benefit from economies of scale (and be cheaper to buy at the same profit margin for the producers). But to achieve that we would have to stop letting professors choose their own books, and professors are not known to appreciate being herded.

"This is an engineering textbook, about 300 pages long, OK? Hard-bound. This costs, anybody guess? How much would it cost in a bookstore? OK, this cost $22 to the students. Why does it cost $22? Because it's published on-demand, and it's developed from this repository of open material. If this book was to be published by a regular publisher, it would cost at least $122 dollars."

-- Richard Baraniuk, 2006 -- http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_...

So it's a bit more complex than that. It may be "economy of scale" in that a professor isn't going to take the time to write a solid textbook without being able to make back at least his expenses. But if we had some way for people to collaborate more easily and cheaply to write a textbook...

"The problem is that the average textbook sells a small run of copies, and doesn't benefit from economies of scale"

WHAT??? for example, stewart's calculus book has been used for twenty+ years all over the english speaking world. you find me a ny times bestseller that has had that kind of run

Stewart isn't an "average textbook"

"Justified" is a concept that exists only in your head. Yes, the most successful textbooks make millions of dollars for their publishers and authors (Paul Samuelson's Economics for example). The least successful ones lose lots of money. What do you mean by "justified"?

its amusing how harvard stanford and princeton with endowments of like forty quadrillion dollars shake and quiver in the face of a thirty person publishing firm.

the big schools could trivially "nationalize" textbooks with online material. it would be cheaper just to buy a new laptops for students who don't have the means to access the data

Is this not what MIT are doing with OCW?

Similar, but it's not quite the whole picture. I've downloaded the materials from a wide range of classes, and the quantity of material and subsequent potential for greater understanding varied greatly.

Lecture notes are no replacement for a well-written textbook, especially if you're an autodidact attempting to further your horizons.

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