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bdsherman14 karma

So, a couple of reasons, first, it’s just inertia.  Professors, like all of us, tend to be creatures of habit, and most of them are a bit older and set in their ways.  They’ve been using a certain book for years and don’t want to change their entire class model for new material.  

Secondly, while some of the free class material is great, the free stuff available is sometimes not as comprehensive and options can be limited in certain disciplines. 

Here’s what the free courseware like OpenStax has done, though.  They have FORCED the for-profit publishers to radical change their business model and lower their prices.  I don’t think this would have happened, and certainly not as quickly unless free course material was gaining traction.  Great, question!

bdsherman10 karma

Hey, Yack, 

Really glad you asked this question.  You are correct.  We make money when students use our site to find their books.  When a student clicks on one of our links to go buy what we found for them, we get a commission.  So, yes, we are a business. We spent, like 100k developing this tool.  The algorithms and programming behind what we do is absurd.  I have no idea if we will ever make that money back, but what I do know is that whether non-profit, or for-profit, our tool is free, and it can save students loads of money in totally unique ways never done before.  Real solutions do come out of the private sector. 

I’ve been thinking about your question a lot, and I have to politely disagree that we aren’t helping students beat the textbook industry.  If we collectively save students 10 million dollars, that’s 10 mil in their pockets and not in the bank account of the publishers.  

After reading your second question, I think I understand your first better. 

I think your second question is insightful and asks a really important question that I have not considered.  Do we even need textbooks?  Is there another way to disseminate and teach complex information without textbooks?  I really have no idea, though I know we are getting there with places like Kahn Academy.

Let me be clear.  I don’t think textbooks are evil.  I probably think they are necessary (at least at present).  Certainly my family and the families of my employees have made their livings by selling textbooks on the secondary market these past years.   I hope you won’t think it a cop-out if I say that we are laser-focused on helping with the current scenario in the best way we know how.  I can tell you publishers don't like us, and tools like PageLess have the potential to make textbook industry executives stay up at night.  We are a thorn in their side.  I believe that we (usually) have to work within a system to make it better.  Feels like an incomplete answer, but they again, your question was a doozy.

bdsherman6 karma

I would say that some of the professors are part of the problem, but a lot of the time, it is the publishers that are pushing new books on them all of the time. I do not really know of any other market where the person deciding what to buy is not the end user. They are told what books are the best and never told what books cost. They just choose what they are provided. I think that NPRs Planet money did a good podcast on this. The economics of textbooks are interesting.

I have heard that some states have set laws on how much textbooks can cost for a certain course. I am not sure how widespread that is though.

I agree about the used book market. Unfortunately the publishers have some tricks up their sleeve to make this hard. Access codes are one of their ways to get students to buy through them. Used textbooks do NOT come with access codes, so if you buy used, you still have to buy their codes.

The publishers have also just recently started to do some very complex things to force used textbooks off of the market. The only way to get any "bound version" of a book these days from any of the Major 3 publishers (Pearson, McGraw, and Cengage) is to rent them. They do this so that these books all have to be returned. They have also made it hard to find loose leaf books. Times are quite crazy in the textbook world and we do hope that we can try and help students out.

bdsherman4 karma

As with everything, this is not a simple answer. Most institutions do not make much (or any) money on textbook sales. They do, however have long standing contracts from "way back" when the college bookstore was the only way to get your textbooks.  These contracts are usually restrictive (in favor of the bookstore), and usually give the bookstore operator sole approval to sell books on campus.   In my opinion there is no "foul play" occurring. The institutions themselves don't set the prices (which are usually grossly inflated), or profit from the book sales. Universities/Colleges have contracted out their on-campus book sales, to ensure that there are books available on campus for students.  This can sometimes allow for mini-geographical-monopolies, which is super not awesome for students.  Luckily, these days the internet exists.

bdsherman3 karma

I also forgot to mention eBooks and other online content. The publishers are really focusing on everything online because none of these things can ever be sold after they have been used. Their main goal is trying to get rid of the used markets so that people have to buy directly through them.