#bcto09 Elaborating on my textbooks

At BookcampTO I got a lot of attention during the Kindle, Schmindle talk when I brought up changing attitudes towards print books in higher education. The reason I gave was that I downloaded books under Creative Commons, GFDL and free-as-in-beer licenses. I’d like to give more context and a few examples of the textbooks I’ve downloaded.

There are two people who come to mind when I think of this conversation. The first is the person who I responded to, who explained how her students prefer print to online sources. I raised up my hand and explained that print as a medium isn’t what’s attractive to students so much as the editing and review that goes into it before a textbook makes it to print. That’s where I dropped the line that got all eyes in the room pointed to me:

“I haven’t bought a textbook in two years.”

Right now printed books dominate in that regard but we’re seeing textbooks written from the ground up to be Creative Commons licensed though still going through the same peer review and editing processes. We’ve also got books that are written for print under traditional copyrights but also released for free online (as was the case with my CSC 310 textbook, my CSC108 and 148 textbooks, and others). I’m lucky in that computer science seems to have a wealth of free textbooks, much more than any other field.

I’m beginning to see a trend.

Professors are picking texts that are freely available, or building readers out of papers from open journals, or annotating and redistributing texts that allow them to. This isn’t because professors dislike publishers or authors. It might be because it’s the only way they can reduce costs for students and there’s a lot of really good, free content out there. It might be because it’s easier to make course readers out of chapters than muck with licensing groups. It might be because the professor can edit and improve. In my security course we used free online texts that the professor annotated and distributed rather than giving a separate slip of paper with notes. This is the sort of freedom that Flat World Knowledge, Bookriff and SymText offer.

Is print really better?

Foxit eSlick Reader

I don’t know what the reasoning is because I haven’t talked to these professors but I do challenge the notion that print is better. Every higher education student, with rare exception, carries a laptop with them. From the student viewpoint I would much rather download four free textbooks per semester instead of buying eight hundred dollars of paper. It’s far easier on my back, and my wallet. I can do a full text search if the index is poor. There are hyperlinks which make following up a source so much easier and more likely. My fellow students are happy to read on their laptops, but I bought a two hundred dollar epaper reader so I can read on it while coding on my laptop. I realize I’m an outlier right now yet I’m not convinced that I will be in five years when these readers come down in price, add colour and connectivity.

Crest of the University of Toronto
Image via Wikipedia

Readers of online textbook are just as likely to read everything as use for reference

The next person I’m reminded of is a University of Toronto member (a librarian I assume) who explained how we have roughly 630,000 full texts available online. As a student I know she’s talking about our Books 24×7 subscription. I don’t recall the total number of readers but I do remember that the number of people who skimmed certain pages versus the number of people who read page by page to be roughly equal. I qualify that as tentative support of the observed trend and would like to see more numbers.

Things are changing in higher education textbooks. You can’t rely on print books being bought over another source simply because they’re print. You can’t rely on electronic copies being used to sell paper copies in all demographics. Makers of print textbooks need to recognize that they have a huge advantage right now in terms of reliability but they can’t afford to sit on their laurels while their competition improves. Some demographics won’t consider print an advantage and in a few cases it’s a disadvantage. To serve these people will take some out of the book thinking and I think I helped give an early wake up call to bookcampTO.

What I’m saying is this:

  • There are professors out there who want to add their own touch to books.
  • Look into freemium business models. Your competition might already be there.
  • Releasing free online copies of your book won’t always translate into print sales.
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2 Comments to “#bcto09 Elaborating on my textbooks”

  1. Dan H. 8 June 2009 at 10:38 pm #

    I think I must have only bought 1 or two text books during the later half of my undergrad. In a lot of courses, I found that I didn’t even used the textbooks. So I stopped buying them. Instead I rely on class notes, and online notes published by the professor.

    And who can afford to be spending ~$150 per book nowadays! I can always take it out on loan from the library too…since I used to spend most of my days there!

  2. #BCTO09 – Summary | Random Musings

    [...] #bcto09 Elaborating on my textbooks [...]


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