Monday, September 15, 2008

Link by Link - Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free - NYTimes.com

Save-the-trees ... and keep textbook market prices in line; see the full article for more details

In protest of what he says are textbooks’ intolerably high prices — and the dumbing down of their content to appeal to the widest possible market — Professor McAfee [R. Preston McAfee, an economics professor at Cal Tech] has put his introductory economics textbook online free. He says he most likely could have earned a $100,000 advance on the book had he gone the traditional publishing route, and it would have had a list price approaching $200.

“This market is not working very well — except for the shareholders in the textbook publishers,” he said. “We have lots of knowledge, but we are not getting it out.”

Link by Link - Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free - NYTimes.com

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