Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/02/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Why on earth would textbook publishers grant Apple the rights to make their books available on the ipad? On Feb 5, 2010, at 9:31 AM, rickfloyd at comcast.net wrote: > > > My kids undergraduate texts books are $500 - $600 per semester. > That's about $125 to $150 per book on an average. > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Spencer Cheng" <spencer at aotera.org> > To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org> > Sent: Friday, February 5, 2010 10:20:21 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada > Eastern > Subject: Re: [Leica] iPad and textbooks > > > On Feb 5, 2010, at 9:41, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote: >> Why so many college textbooks at $50 a pop? Many colleges, >> including mine, >> look for a magic number in evaluating professors for promotion. >> Our college >> counts the number of papers published in academic journals as a >> major index. >> Three peer reviewed papers equal one textbook. Judging from personal >> experience it is quicker, and often easier, to write a textbook for >> undergraduate courses than to do the research for a substantive >> paper. >> Naturally the publishers want to sell co-pies of the books that >> they print >> so the professors are encouraged to require all students to buy >> the latest >> edition of the book. The iPad, using books accessed from the >> internet, will >> kill that market. The colleges will be forced to use a different >> metric than >> "Publish or perish." > > $50 a pop? Not even when I went to school a longtime ago. :) > > Engineering and computer science textbooks are more likely to be > $100-$200 today. I've bought a technical book for work once that > was about $1/page. > > Publish or perish still applies though. How else will they judge if > someone is worthy of a professorship? > > If I am in school today, I would happily buy anything that would > allow me not to carry around 5Kg of paper every day to/from class. > I have computer so an extension like an iPad would not be a problem. > > Regards, > Spencer > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information